Cinefantastique Magazine: 1970-2002

EFANTASTIO

Volume 9 Number 2 $295

I

/

on the effects of THE BLACK HOLE

Next in CINEFANTASTIQUE. our
incredible 96-page coverage of THE
BLACK HOLE, the most spectacular
and technically ambitious science fic¬
tion film ever undertaken by the
Disney studios. “Inside TH E BLAC K
HOLE” meticulously details this five-
vears-in-the-making project, with an
emphasis on its staggering spectrum
of effects which involved expens from
literally every depanment in the Walt
Disney organization. Writer Paul M.
Sammon explores the entire history
of THE BLACK HOLE, from its in¬
ception to the wrap on its 135 day
first unit shooting schedule, involving
nearly 2H years of model work. At
last, the full storv behind the making
of THE BLACK HOLE revealed as
only CINEFANTASTIQUE knows
how! Sammon interviewed more than
twenty key Disney personnel on their
role in creating the film, including
renowned Academy Award winning
special effects artists An Cruickshank,
special model photography director,
and Eustace Lycett, director of special
photographic effects, also Harrison
Ellenshaw, chief matte artist and head

96 Page Double Issue
24 Pages of Color Photos!

of the Disney matte department, Joe
Hale, supervisor of cel animation
special effects, matte painter David
Mattingly, Gordon Cooper, former
Mercury astronaut currently a vice-
president in the Disney organization
and a technical advisor on the film,
John Mansbridge, art director, chief
model builderTerrv Saunders, sound
effects supervisor Robert J. Wylie,
Robert Broughton, special optical
effects coordinator, and many others.
Also included in this mammoth, fully
illustrated, color-packed edition is
the first, fully detailed history of the

incredible ACES, Disney’s million
dollar computerized effects camera
system revealed in all its intricacy' by
David Snyder, David Inglish, Don
Iwcrks, Art Cruickshank, and Bob
Otto the men who transformed this
automated dream into reality. Plus
Sammon’s comprehensive in-depth
career biography of the legendary
Peter Ellenshaw.nroduction designer
and director of the film’s special
effects. In addition, you’ll seepages of
revealing, behind-the-scenes photos
of the production, many in full color,
learn the secrets behind the film’s

! CINEFANTASTIQUE. POST OFFICE BOX 270. OAK PARK. ILLINOIS 60303

| Enclosed is my check or money order for the subscription I have checked below
i Rush me my double issue on THE BLACK HOLE (counts as two issues) and my
J free Mattingly full color 17x22 poster, shipped unfolded in a sturdy mailing tube

- n Four Issues $10 □ Eight Issues $18 □ Twelve Issues $25

Name

Address

Zip Code

State

unique hovering robots, as explained
by their creator George McGinnis,
and study the preproduction design
paintings by the world famous space
artist Robert McCall, some of which
were never used in the final film. All
this and more, written with the wit,
detail, and accuracy vou’ve come to
expect from CINEFANTASTIQUE.
the review of horror, fantasy and
science fiction films. Subscribe today,
and reserve vour copy of our exciting
double issue on THE Bl-ACK HOLE,
to be mailed to subscribers shortly
after the film opens on December 25.
As our free gift for subscribing, you’ll
receive the stunning, full color poster
shown above, by David Mattingly,
Disney matte artist on THE BLACK
HOLE, shipped unfolded in a sturdv
mailing tube. By subscribing vou’fl
save from $2-$il over the cost of
buving your issues at a newsstand or
bookstore, and receive them weeks
sooner. And, as an added bonus for
taking a 12 Issue subscription, your
full color David Mattingly poster will
be personally signed and numbered

bv the artist! Send vour order todav!

/ / # '

Mailed in December
when the film premieres!

MO

I

l

D

SENSE OF WONDER
by Frederick S. Clarke

It came as a little bit of a disappointment
to learn that SALEM’S LOT was being done
for television instead of the motion picture
screen, but then things could have been
worse: Warner Bros could have decided to
go ahead theatrically as was once planned
with Larry Cohen at the helm, that well-
meaning but bungling self-styled auteur of
horror who gave you IT’S ALIVE and THE
DEMON. The point is, what really makes or
breaks a project is the talent involved, and
when we learned a little more about the
telefilm and its producer Richard Kobritz,
who is calling the shots in bringing King’s
vampire novel to the small screen, the
prospects started to look a whole lot better.
When you read Bill Kelley’s article on the
production and his interview with Kobritz,
“SALEM’S LOT: Filming Horror for Tele¬
vision,*’ you may start to shake your antip¬
athy for TV, its tiny picture, tinny sound and
commercial interruptions, and work-up
some real enthusiasm for seeing what the
advantages of the medium can bring to the
large canvass of Stephen King’s vision of
horror. For starters, Kobritz hired genre
director Tobe Hooper, the peipetrator of
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, to
insure against getting a “TV look.” Hooper
talks about the challenges involved, and
how his work on the project promises to
revitalize his sagging career. Hooper calls
SALEM’S LOT “an epic, the GONE WITH
THE WIND” of its genre.

Also previewed this issue are two eagerly
awaited December releases, Disney's THE
BLACK HOLE and STAR TREK-THE
MOTION PICTURE. Both, at the very least,
promise some of the most dazzling visual
effects since STAR WARS. The big question
is, will they offer anything more? After
Disney*s drum-beating about changing their
image, it comes as a bit of a shock to learn
that THE BLACK HOLE features two “cute”
talking robots, Vincent and Old Bob, virtual
cartoon characters to tug at our heart strings.

It remains to be seen how damaging this
fillip to the family audience will be to the
film’s more serious side, and its secret,
surprise ending that is rumored to be as
startling as Kubrick’s conclusion for 2001.
STAR TREK, on the other hand, has no cute
robots we know of, but its script does have
some disappointingly close and specific par¬
allels to two of the old series episodes. My
pessimism is showing of course, as always,
and yet I still hold great hope to be amazed
come December. □

THE BLACK HOLE by Paul M. Sammon 4

A preview of Walt Disney s Christmas science fiction film spectacular, including interviews
with executive producer and studio chief Ron Miller, and director Gary Nelson

SAL Th M K L?L .u . by Bill Kelley

The behind-the-scenes story of bringing Stephen King’s novel to television, including
interviews with King, producer Richard Kobritz, director Tobe Hooper, and others.

9

9 F t ^ TITANS by Mike Childs and Alan Jones 22

Special effects grandmaster Ray Harryhausen, producer Charles H. Schneer and director
Desmond Davis talk about the filming of Harryhausen's latest special effects tourde force.

STAR TREK-THE MOTION PICTURE by Preston Neal Jones 40

Interviews with the actors and filmmakers reveal some of the new advances in Starfleet,
coming our way December 7 in the most expensive science fiction film ever made.

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR b y Steven Dimeo 30

ARABIAN ADVENTURE_ by Dan R. Scapperotti 29

LEGEND OF THE WOLF WOMAN by Jeff Stafford 28

THE MUPPET MOVIE

by Lisa Jensen 30

PUBLISHER AND EDITOR: Frederick S. Clarke. BUREAUS: New York—David Bartholomew

Dan R. Scapperotti; Los Angeles—Jordan R. Fox; London: Mike Childs, Alan Jones; Paris—
Frederic Albert Levy. CONTRIBUTORS: Steven Dimeo, Lisa Jensen, Preston Neal Jones, Bill
Kelley, Glenn Lovell, Tim Lucas, Ted Newsom, Lee Rolfe, Paul M. Sammon, Jeff Stafford.

CINEFANTASTIQUE is published quarterly at P. O. Box 270, Oak Park IL 60303. Single copies

when purchased from the publisher are $4. Subscriptions: Four Issues $10, Eight Issues $18.
Twelve Issues $25. Foreign subscriptions are no extra charge, but please pay in USA funds only.
Second Class Postage Paid at Oak Park IL (USPS#0145-6032). Printed in USA Contents are
copyright 01979 by Frederick S. Clarke. CINEFANTASTIQUE is a Registered U.S. Trademark.

RETAIL DISTRIBUTION: In the United States and Canada by Bernard DeBoer Inc., 188 High

Street, Nutley NJ07110. Other countries please apply four our liberal discount and terms of sale.

Front Cover The inhabitants of SALEM'S LOT, painted by Roger Stine.

Ben Meara (David Soul) stakes Barlow at the end of SALEM'S LOT: Background

. .in the past
we’ve been
limited in our
appeal. We’ve
missed the
audience that
saw and loved
STAR WARS
and CLOSE
ENCOUNTERS
OF THE
THIRD KIND.
Hopefully, with
THE BLACK
HOLE, we can
reach that vast
audience.”

Ron Miller,

Executive Producer

Might: A “humanoid” robot
mam the controls on thr
Cygnus Observatory and
Command Town irt. Above:
Vincent horns onto thr
Command Tourer. trading thr
crru'ofthr Palomino. Anthony
Pnkim. Robert Forster. I'tvf/r
Xtimirux. and Ernest
Borgninr. Left: Dirrrtor Gary
Xelson prepares for a i cmr
involving an armrd Sentry
robot. The film’s many and
xaried robots are thr u*ork of
George .McGinnis, undn thr
command of Prtn Ulmshaw.
thr production drsignn
responsible for the film’s
fantastic visual concepts.

Producer Ron Miller is Walt
Disney’s son-in-law; appropriately
enough, his headquarters are lo¬
cated in Disney’s old office on the
studio lot itself. Sandwiched be¬
tween the studio’s two screening
rooms on the third floor of the
American Building, the Disney/
Miller office exudes its history in a
neatlv persuasive atmosphere of
comfortable nostalgia. Exhibition
cases, a deep cream-colored rug.
panelled walls ithe real thing, with
worked-in moldings at baseboard
and ceiling) on which are hung the
innumerable citations and awards
the Disney organization has gath¬
ered in the past are all dominated
by the massive wooden desk be¬
hind w'hich Miller controls all the
minutae of the studio itself. The
overall effect is one of quiet effi¬
ciency, of power masked by gen¬
tility, but ghosts linger, too; here,
where the persona of Disney him¬
self is so strongly felt, one begins to
half-believe that Miller is merely
keeping the chair warm until Walt
comes striding in through the door,
nodding, waving, and wearing that
famous grin.

Since the early 70’s, Ron Miller
has served as the Disney Studio’s
executive producer on virtually all
Filins and television segments re¬
leased by the company— on the lot,
he is The Man. Physically, Miller
cuts a commanding presence by
the fact of sheer bulk—at six foot
five, tanned, handsome, well over
200 pounds, he appears to be in the
same impressive shape that enabled
him to play football as an end at

USC and. later, spend a year with
the Los Angeles Rams during the
early and mid-50’s. He also is cor¬
dial and willing to please. Yet one
never forgets that this is a man who
is one of the last living, intimate
components of the intricate Dis¬
ney legend, a mega-businessman
constantly directing the flow of
hundreds of millions of other
people’s dollars. His personality
seems firm and decisive, but with
little of that glacial indifference so
often exhibited by key corporate
personnel.

It’s that last quality, perhaps,
one that Walt himself treasured so,
that triggers a half-forgotten anec¬
dote as we begin discussing THE
BLACK HOLE. In May 1954, Mill¬
er wed Diane, Walt Disney’s eldest
daughter, and by all accounts the
ceremony was a modest affair, con¬
sidering the father of the bride's
status. But not surprisingly, it man¬
aged to incorporate one small
Disney touch—the figures on their
wedding cake, detailed as any stu¬
dio drawing, show f ed Diane dress¬
ed in Levis, while a barefooted
Miller was revealed in Bermuda
shorts. And wearing his football
helmet.

In undertaking a project like THE
BIACK HOLE, it appears that Disney u
making a conscious effort to broaden its
popular appeal, and therefore its com¬
mercial appeal. Would you agree with
thatf

Yes. 1 guess that it’s taken me
awhile, as well as some other
people in the organization, to real-

ire producer Ron Miller and director
Ison talk about Disney’s
^fiction gamble. ti

i/e chat in the past we’ve been limited
in our appeal. That limitation basic¬
ally means that we’ve missed that
audience between the ages of 13 and
30— the audience that saw and loved
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE
THIRD KIND two or three times and
who loved and saw STAR WARS six
or seven times, for that matter. And.
hopefully, with THE BLACK HOLE,
we can reach that audience. But THE
BI.ACK HOLE is only the beginning.
Beyond this picture, I see us reaching
that same audience with some other
films that we’ve either got in the
shooting or planning stages, projects
such as THE LAST VOYAGE OF
NOAH’S ARK or WATCHER IN
THE WOODS or CONDOR MAN.
So we’re trying to make THE BLACK
HOLE—I hate to use the word “so¬
phisticated.’’ because it’s not—but
we’re trying to make our picture just
that much more appealing to all ages
rather than to the limited age we have
!>een appealing to for the last few
years.

Although it’s hecoming an increasingly
common industry trend, the original budget
of SI 7.' million on THE BLACK HOLE
certainly represents one of the heaviest
investments Disney has ever made on a
feature film. Did you realize from the
beginning that it was going to be this
expensive7

Oh yeah, even going back five, six
years ago when we first started work¬
ing on it, which was a completely
different version than what we have
today. Even then we knew it was a
very, very expensive picture. For¬
tunately. we did not make that ver¬
sion. In the first version, the black
hole didn’t even make an appear¬
ance. It’s really become serendipity.

How many rewrites has the script gone
through?

We’ve had at least five or six
rewrites. But as I say, it’s become
serendipity. Because all of a sudden,
when we came up with the concept of
the black hole and the black hole
itself became a very integral pan of
the story, suddenly, beyond our con¬
trol or anticipation, cover stories on
black holes appeared in Newsweek,
Time, and all these other magazines.
And just as suddenly, everybody in
the world knew about our BLACK
HOLE. So there’s a great curiosity
about black holes, and there’s a great
curiosity about our picture right now.
In fact, I was at Pinewood Studios a
few weeks ago, which is outside of
London. I’m in the laboratory and all
of a sudden this total stranger comes
up and says. “Ah, you’re Mr. Black
Hole.” Wherever I go now I’m Mr.
Black Hole. Which is great. I just
hope that I don’t disappoint all these
people.

THE BLACK HOLE originally began
as a production of Winston Hibler. who pro¬
duced ISLAND AT THE TOP OE THE
WORLD for Disney, among others. How
dul the project eirntually come under your
control?

Two guys. Bob Barbash and Rich¬
ard Landau, came up with the orig¬
inal idea. They presented it to me in
mv office and I thought it was worthy
of our consideration. So I then called
Hibler in, who I thought was suited
for the project. You see, from where
I’m sitting, I do a sort of casting job.
In my opinion, certain producers are
more qualified for doing comedy
and other producers are more quali¬
fied for doing science fiction. So as I
recall, I had Winston come in and lis-

“They called
me in late
November of
1977. They
sent me the
script. I read
it—and turned
it down.”

Gars- Nelson. Director

Is ft: Max. the towering
robot ehieftan who rum the
Cygnus and its robot crew.
Right: A scene reminiscent
of20,000 LEAGUES
UNDER THE SEA. as the
crew of the Palomino dines
with Captain Reinhardt
and learns the reason his
ship is moored so perilously
close to the black hole of the
title. Ear Right: Old Rob.
a junked and forgotten
prototype for Vincent found
by the cretr of the Palomino,
comes to the rescue in the
hospital sequence. Max.
Old Rob and Vincent are
"hoverers. " so called by
their designer George
McGinnis, because they
can counteract gravity on
board the ( \gnus and seem
to float through the air. a
challenging effects concept.

ten to the presentation —it was very
short, really, two or three pieces of
their artwork of a space station—and
from that we started developing the
project with those writers. We weren’t
altogether happv with what they had
come up with, so from that point it
was just a series of attempts to come
up with something better. Unfortun¬
ately, Winston passed away, and I just
took it on solely. And I think that we
have finally come up with a script
that’s both commercial and enter¬
taining.

Was it your idea to involve Peter
Ellenshaw as the prouction designer and
director of special effects on THE BLACK
HOLE?

Oh. definitely. I knew how tal¬
ented and creative Mister Ellenshaw
— he’ll love that —is. Really. I’m sure
he came out of retirement for this
because he found it a challenge, more
of a challenge than anything he’s ever
been confronted w’ith before. I don’t
think he’d have come out of retire¬
ment just to do “another picture.”

Is THE BLACK HOLE being mar¬
keted in a manner that distinguishes it from
other Disney films?

We have taken a certain low-key
approach insofar as the title THE
BLACK HOLE is more prominent
than the words “A Walt Disney Pro¬
duction,” instead of vice-versa. But it
all gets back to the same thing. You
can spend $50 million on advertising
and if you don’t have word of mouth,
it’s going to hun vour picture. Your
picture has got to stand on its own
merits.

The first wave of people that go in
to see THE BLACK HOLE-as hap¬
pened with the first wave which saw
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE
THIRD KIND—if they come out and
tell their neighbors and friends, “Boy,
you’ve got to see this picture right
away, it’s great,” then they’re going to
go see it and it’s going to be an over¬
night success. But if you have an
adverse public reaction to it, I don’t
care how much money you spend on
advertising, it just won’t do it. Now
our publicity department doesn’t a-
gree with me. They think that if a
picture is successful it’s because of
the advertising campaign. I don’t
quite believe that.

Does Disney plan an extensive pro¬
motional tie-in subsequent to the release of
THE BLACK HOLE?

We have a lot of tie-ins. In fact
we’ve got more commercial tie-ins
on this picture than we’ve had on any
other picture in the past. One of our
advantages over, say, STAR WARS
and their Black Falcon Ltd., is that
they had to create their own mer¬
chandising firm. We have.our own
merchandising division, publication
division, and everything else we need
right here.

The Disney Studios are equip¬
ped with four sound stages. Entering
Stage 3, where THE BLACK HOLE’S
effects are being shot, one’s eye takes
in the the usual No Admittance
When Red Light Is On and Quiet!
signs. But you’re immediately drawn
to another, more unusual notice:
Danger! Laser in Operation! This
refers to a low-wattage laser aiming
svstem which is being used on ACES,
Disney's new million-dollar computer
controlled camera system. Though
the danger itself is minimal, the signs
announcing the possibility are quite
firm.

Inside the cavernous, semi-dark¬
ened building which inspires the hush
of a cathedral, An Cruickshank and a
small technical crew’ are shooting a
sequence of the Probe Ship against
an enormous blue screen which flows
from floor to ceiling. To their left is
the titanic Star Field—roughly 20 by
300 feet—against which the main
Cygnus and Palomino sequences
were filmed. And farther to the left of
that, a small group of men stand clus¬
tered around a Movieola, going over
some dailies (an idea of the incredible
volume of the usual sound stage can
be grasped if you consider that Stage
3 houses all of the preceding plus an
area where sequences involving “live
steam” during the Cygnus break-up
were filmed, a small model shop, a
storyboard area—and still remains
nearly a quarter empty).

My guide, unit publicist Mike
Bonifer, approaches the group, says
something, and returns with a dark,
mustached, youthful-looking man
whom I am later surprised to learn is
in his mid-forties. This is the di¬
rector of THE BLACK HOLE. Gary
Nelson.

Nelson started his directorial ca¬
reer in television, when an acquain¬
tance he had struck with actor Richard
Boone eventually led to his directing

some segments of thai actor’s HAVE
CUN. WILL TRAVEL series. At the
time. Nelson was only in his mid¬
twenties. and unlike the current trend,
his relative youthfulness worked a-
gainst him — the chance of furthering
his craft after the series folded were
practically non-existent, and some
lean years followed. Eventually, Nel¬
son again found himself working in
television, this time in comedy, di¬
recting, among others, several epi¬
sodes of GET SMART. His first job
with Disney was a two-pan episode of
that company’s long-running tele¬
vision program, titled SECRETS OF
THE PIRATE’S INN, featuring the
late Ed Begley. Nelson’s first feature
film, FREAKY FRIDAY, was a Disnev
production released in 1977. Since
then he has directed the mini-series
WASHINGTON BEHIND CLOSED
DOORS and TO KILL A COP. a
pitty 1978 NBC-TV telefilm featur-
ingjoe Don Baker in a chief-of-police
versus black revolutionaries plot,
which spun-off as a 1979 fall series
called EISCHIED. Nelson is calm,
soft-spoken, seemingly unaffected by
the cnonnous complexities of the
project he has devoted nearly two
years of his life to. During our con¬
versation we both laughed frequent¬
ly, and easily. Nelson, incidentally,
smokes. Kools.

On a film as costly and prestigious as
THE BLACK HOLE, uas there ever any
hesitation on hiring a director that wasn Y a
"name"?

Probably, because I wasn’t the
first director to become involved on
the project. It’s been around for
nearly six years now. As you know,
Winston Hibler, the original produc¬
er, died after working on it for a
couple of years. The project was then
shelved. STAR WARS came out a few
vears later, and thev subsequentlv
brought THE BLACK HOLE off the
shelf and assigned another director to
it, John Hough [THE LEGEND OF
HELL HOLTSE]. But it took too long
to get ready, and he bowed out be¬
cause of other commitments, and it
went back on the shelf. Then the
script was rewritten. Bv now they
thought it was in pretty’ good shape,
and they called me. in late November
1977. They sent me the script, I read
it—and turned it down.

What finally convinced you to do it?

The one-sixteenth scale model of the Cygnus, built by Danny tee and Terry Saunders. 12’!)” long weighing 170 lbs. positioned for filming.

After a couple of conversations
with the studio, they asked me to
come over and take a look at the
miniatures and to also look over
some of Peter’s [Ellenshaw Sr.] pro¬
duction illustrations. I was filming at
the time, so I came in on a Saturday. I
was to meet with Peter, as he was
coming dow’n from Santa Barbara.
But it was the weekend of a horren¬
dous rainstorm and he could not get
out of there. So I came in by myself,
met with the producer, and then,
when they showed me Peter’s render¬
ings. I fell in love with them. Peter’s
renderings turned me on. It was the
concept, the look of the film, plus the
uniqueness of all the hardware we’re
using that convinced me to do it.

Then do you conceive of THE BIAC.K
HOLE as being purely an exercise in special
visual effects*

No, I don’t. The emphasis is ob¬
viously on it being an effects film, but
effects alone won’t carry’ it. Just as the
plot and the characters will not carry
the film. It’ll be a happy blend of
story, characters and effects that will
make the film successful.

You earlier mentioned your dissatis¬
faction with the script. Did you do any work
on it yourself?

Uh-huh. Total rewrites, with Jeb
Rosebrook. one of our screenwriters.
It became a different story. That was
the first thing I did when I came here.
It was my feeling that the story thcv
had when I came in didn’t com¬
pletely work. So I attempted to try
and make it work as a film. I feel that I
perhaps guided the story more into
an area of mystery than was origin¬
ally presented. Also, we went into the
black hole itself, which wasn’t there
before, plotwise.

Was there any on-set rewriting, some¬
thing done on a daily basis?

Some, but it was pretty’ minute.
That angle was pretty much settled
before we started filming.

Did you conduct any personal research
on the black hole phenomenon before you
started work on the film?

I did as much as I could within
the time frame that we had. We met
with an awful lot of people from
national observatories, and also some
scientists from theJ PL. I had wanted
to go to England to meet a fellow
named Stephen Hawking, who is
probably the greatest authority on
black holes, but I was unable to do it.

There seems to be a superficial simi¬
larity between 20,000 LEA CUES UNDER
THE SEA and THE BLACK HOLE.

Yes there does, in flavor anyway. I
think that the flavor of it does have
that similarity— perhaps because the
characters in THE BLACK HOLE
have a slight parallel to those in
20,000 LEAGUES.

Eor instance, you could equate Maxi¬
milian Schell's Reinhardt with James Ma¬
son’s Captain Nemo— they both share a dis¬
tinctive megalomania.

They do. and vet it’s not delib¬
erate. I mean, we cenainlv didn’t run
the old 20.000 LEAGUES here at the
studio or dig up its script and say,
‘‘Well, we’re just going to polish it
over and remake 20.000 LEAGUES
in deep space.” It's just that our story
happens to lend itself to what we’re
doing with it, just as 20,000 LEAGUES
did. and subsequently there is a slight
parallel between them.

How long were you involved in the
principal photography *

I believe it was 135 days and, for
the most part, it ran smoothlv. F.verv

day was a problem, though, every¬
day. Fortunately, most of those prob¬
lems were anticipated, so it was not
like we walked into the situation
blind. We also knew’ that there was
only so much preparation you could
do. We knew that a lot of what we
were going to be doing on the first
unit had to be done on our feet.
When shooting, vou are confronted
with a whole different set of problems
you don’t anticipate.

It’s very easy to overlook the cast on a
picture of this type. How were the actors*

The cast was superb. They reallv
were. And they all enjoyed being
here at Disney. They- almost consider¬
ed it a holiday. Disney’s a unique
studio in which to work.

They certainly had a lot of gadgets to
uork with.

Right. Especially for Maximilian
Schell. His favorite cartoon charac¬
ter is Dopey, by the wav. Schell used
to wander for hours through the
archives here, looking at old cels
from the past.

Schell is a director himself, of course.
Was there any feedback between the two of
you during production*

Quite a bit. veah. We had a good
rapport. It started when I met him
and continued all the w’ay through
the film.

Did he aer attempt to impose his own
ideas*

He didn’t impose them, he merelv
suggested them. He was not a man to
strongly or w illfully impose his ideas.
He did throw out a number of things
to broaden his character, manv of
which I used, because he’s a m^p of
good taste and good ideas. It would
have been foolish on my part to reject
continued page 36

7

Behind-the-scenes of the
production, interviews with
producer Richard Kobritz,
and director Tobe Hooper.

FILMING HORROR
FOR TELEVISION
article by Bill Kelley

The man producer Richard Kobritz called
upon to get him his vampire in SALEM’S LOT
is Tobe Hooper, the director of THE TEXAS
CHAINSAW MASSACRE and the last person
one might expect to find directing a glossv
production for a major studio. . .much less
one intended as a television miniseries. Yet the
hiring of Tobe Hooper is only one incident in
a production chronicle almost as complex as
the story of SALEM’S LOT itself, which comes
to TV November 17th and 24th on CBS.

Stephen King’s 400-page* novel of vampir¬
ism in contemporary New England was ac¬
quired four years ago by Warner Brothers,
who intended to produce it as a theatrical
feature. At the outset. King and the studio
agreed that he would not write the screen¬
play. He was busy with his own projects as a
novelist (in less than a year. King’s career
would begin to soar). So Warners was left with
the task of finding someone to adapt King’s
brilliant but complicated plot into something
manageable as a normal movie—and with¬
out sacrificing the elements that made the
book so powerful.

But over the course of the next two years,
the studio was unable to come up with a
satisfactory* screenplay. Stirling Silliphant (who
had adapted IN THE HEAT OETHE NIGHT
and more recently THE SWARM, and was
also producing for Warners), Robert Getc hell
(ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE)
and writer/director Larrv Cohen (whose in¬
dependent feature ITS ALIVE was a surprise
sleeper for Warners in 1974) all contributed
screenplays. . all of them rejected by studio
brass. SALEM’S LOT was becoming not only
an impossible project, but a source of frustra¬
tion: CARRIE, a King novel filmed bv Brian
DePaltna, was released in late* 1976 and
began rac king up enormous profits. Warners
was sitting on a potential goldmine, but
could do nothing with it.

“It was a mess,’’ King recalls. “Even-
director in Hollywood who’s ever been in¬
volved with horror wanted to do it, but
nobody could come up with a script. I finally
gave up trying to keep a scorecard.’’

At one point, if only because Warners was

“I didn't want a smarmy, romantic
sentimental Frank Langella vampire
for SALEM’S LOT. What I wanted
was the essence of evil—a monster.
And that’s what I got.”

Richard Kobritz, Producer

running out of writers and directors to con¬
sider, Tobe Hooper’s name was mentioned
in connection with the SALEM’S LOT movie.
But by then, interest in the project at the
theatrical division was beginning to flag.
Finally, it was turned over to Warner Brothers
Television, in the hope that a fresh approach
— and the possibility of financial interest by a
network—would revitalize* it.

Enter Richard Kobritz. Kobritz was the
38-vear-old vice-president and executive pro¬
duction manager at Warner Brothers Televi¬
sion who had hired John Carpenter to direct
a striking 1978 suspense telefilm, SOMEONE
IS WATCHING ME, starring Lauren Hutton.
As a genre buff with an eye for new talent
(Carpenter went on to direct HALLOWEEN
three weeks after finishing SOMEONE. . .),
Kobritz at least stood a fighting chance of
making some sense out of SALEM’S LOT.

Kobritz began by reading the already-
completed screenplays. “They were terrible,’’
he says. “I mean, it isn’t fair to put down any¬
one’s hard work, but the screenplays just did
not have it —and I think some of the writers

Isfl: Reggie Xaldrr as Barlow, a makeup concept inmlv-
ing.glowing contact lenses developed b\ makeup artistJack
) oung. Below Left: Danny (Hick (Brad Savage) watches
in horror as brother Ralphie (Ronnie Scribner) floats in
through the bedroom window. Effects man Jack Torro de¬
vised an ingenious method to film the sequence without
wires. Below Middle: Production designer Mort Rabino-
witz built this replica of Marsten House on location in
Eemdale, California. Below Right: Ben Mean (David
Soul) stakes Barlow at the conclusion of SALEM'S LO T.
The four-hour T\ minisenes is tentatively scheduled to be
telecast on CBS, 9.00 PM EST. Xoi ember 1 ?th and 24th.

Bill Kelley isTVeditorof the Ft. Lauderdale
Sun-Sentinel, and a regular contributor.

would probably admit that. Besides, the
book is admittedly difficult to translate, so
much is going on. And because of that, I
think it stands a better chance as a television
miniseries than a normal feature film.”

So the decision was made to turn SA¬
LEM'S LOT into a miniseries and thereby
lick the problem of its unwieldy length.
Actually, though the production is technical¬
ly labeled a miniseries, it is basically- a four-
hour movie (3J4 hours, figuring commercial
time) scheduled for successive nights.

Emmy-winning television writer Paul
Monash was contracted to write a new, first-
draft teleplay. Monash had created the land¬
mark dramatic series, JUDD FOR THE DE¬
FENSE (about a flamboyant lawver in the F.
Lee Bailey mold) during the late ’60’s, and as
a producer was responsible for the features
BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE
KID, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE. . and Brian
DePalma’s CARRIE. Monash had also been
producer of the mid-60’s TV series PEYTON
PlJ\CE, a credit that Kobritz—who has re¬
ferred to SALEM’S LOT as “. . .Pevton
Place turning into vampires”—was aware of.
Clearly, one key- factor in a viable teleplay
would be an intelligent combination of the
huge number of characters in SALEM’S
LOT. Monash pulled it ofT.

“His screenplay I like quite a lot,’’ King
offers enthusiastically. “Monash has suc¬
ceeded in combining t he characters a lot, and
it works. He did try- a few things that weren’t
successful the first time. In one draft he
combined the priest. Father Callahan, and
the teacher, Jason Burke, as a priest who
teaches classes. . . and it just didn’t work, so
he split them up.

“Some things were left out because of
time, some because it’s television,” savs King.
“My favorite scene in the book is with Sandy*
McDougall, the young mother, where she tries
to feed her dead baby, and keeps spooning the
food into its mouth. That won’t be on TV,
obviouslv.”

Other changes were made by Kobritz,
who takes a strong creative interest in the

9

“CBS worried about a few things in
the screenplay. They worried about
using a kid as young as Mark Petrie
is in the book, because you’re not
supposed to put a kid that young in
mortal jeopardy—although they do
it just about every day in the soap
operas. Some things were left out
because of time, some because it’s
television. My favorite scene in the
book is with Sandy McDougall, the
young mother, where she attempts
to feed her dead baby, and keeps
spooning the food into its mouth.
That won’t be on TV, obviously.”

Stephen King, Author

films he produces. His three major altera¬
tions to Monash’s first script were: To charac¬
terize the vampire. Barlow, as a hideous,
speechless fiend, not the cultured villain
carried over from the novel; to have the
interior of Marsten House, which looms over
the town of ’Salem’s Lot, visually resemble
the vampire’s festering soul; and to keep
Barlow in the cellar of his lair, Marsten
House, for the final confrontation with the
hero (in the book he is billeted in the cellar of
a boarding house once his mansion is invaded,
a concept Kobritz would later say. “. . works
in the book but wouldn’t in the film.”).
Kobritz also pushed the killing of an impor¬
tant female vampire to the climax, to give her
death more impact and provide the film with
a snap ending.

With the example of such turgid, dra¬
matically impotent “evil-in-a-small-town”
miniseries as HARVEST HOME before them.
Kobritz and Monash were determined to
make SALEM’S LOT work despite the tele¬
vision restrictions against frightening vio¬
lence. The project would be designed as a
relentless mood piece where the threat of
violence—rather than a killing every few
minutes—sustained terror. And it would be
cast with an eye toward good actors first, and
TV names second.

But still, there was the matter of all those
stakings, and a relentless murderer with no
redeeming virtues. . . “CBS worried about
a few things in the screenplay,” King explains.
“Thev worried about using a kid as young as
Mark Petrie is in the book, because you’re not
supposed to put a kid that young in mortal
jeopardy—although they do it every day in
the soap operas.

“Paul Monash finally sent them a memo
that I think covered it. He pointed out, for
one thing, that CARRIE—which was a CBS
network movie—was the only movie that ever
cracked the top five in the weekly ratings.”

Next came casting. From the instant
Barlow was designed to symbolize “the es¬
sence of evil,” Kobritz had in mind Reggie
Nalder—whom he remembered from Hitch¬
cock’s THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO
MUCH, and genre buffs recall from that
film, Michael Armstrong’s MARK OF THE
DEVI Land Curtis Harrington’s THE DEAD
DON’T DIE. Kobritz*s idea was to recreate the
Max Schreck vampire from Murnau’s 1922
NOSFERATU.

In a quirky touch. Kobritz also hired

genre veteran Elisha Cook, Jr. (HOUSE ON
HAUNTED HILL, THE HAUNTED PAL¬
ACE) and former B-movie queen Marie
Windsor to play Weasel, the town drunk, and
Eva Miller, the landlady with whom he’d had
an affair years before.

“That was an inside joke we threw in right
from the start,” Kobritz concedes. “I’m a
Stanley Kubrick bufT, and on purpose we’ve
reunited them 23 years later after THE
KILLING. In the script, it says Eva and
Weasel were at one time married and then got
divorced, so it was funnv to think ofthat same
couple from THE KILLING, 23 years later,
now divorced— but still living together. It was
also the first time since then, I think, that
thev’d worked in a movie and had scenes
together.”

The rest of the casting was less frivolous,
and reflected the seriousness with which
Kobritz wanted the whole enterprise to be
regarded. Kobritz sent James Mason a copy
of the Monash teleplav, ofTering him the role
of Straker, the European antique dealer who
has Barlow smuggled into Marsten House—
and whose character had been expanded in
the absence of a speaking Barlow. Mason
loved the part and agreed to make his first
appearance in a television drama since the
medium’s early days (several years earlier, he
had not been told that 1974’s FRANKEN¬
STEIN: THE TRUE STORY was not in¬
tended for theatrical release).

Key supporting roles went to Emmy
nominee Ed Flanders (Bill Norton, a com¬
posite character who became both the hero¬
ine’s father and the town doctor). Lew Avres
(Jason Burke, the local teacher) and Geoffrey
Lewis (Mike Rverson, the gravedigger). Bon¬
nie Bedel ia, an Oscar nominee 10 vears ago
for THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?,
was cast as Susan Norton, who is on the verge
of leaving’Salem’s Lot before she meets Ben
Mears—played by David Soul.

David Soul? Though the hiring of Soul
may shock or disappoint readers of the book
who know him only through STARSKY AND
HITCH, it marks a shrewd move by Kobritz
(which is discussed at length in his interview).
Soul’s acting abilitv mav sometimes have
been concealed in STARSKY AND HUTCH,
but it wasn’t in the telefilm LITTLE INDIES
OF THE NIGHT, which happens to be the
highest rated TV movie ever made. His
presence therefore guarantees an audience.

“I think the casting of David Soul is fine,”
savs King. “I have no problem with that at
all.”

Soul also offers a strong counterpoint to
Lance Kerwin (who starred in the well re¬
viewed—but poorly rated— 1978 NBC series,
JAMES AT 16), selected to play Mark Petrie.
Kerwin has a brooding presence that under¬
cuts his superficial physical resemblance to
Soul, and the two actors—who join forces to
destroy the vampires at the end of the film-
project a strange chemistry when seen to¬
gether.

SALEM’S LOT was budgeted at $4 mil¬
lion—about norm for a prestige miniseries,
with financing split between CBS and Warner
Brothers—and a European theatrical release
was planned from the start. It would, natural¬
ly, be shorter than miniseries length, but it
would also contain violence not included in
the TV version; for example, the staking of
vampires would not occur below the camera

frame, and one death in particular—Bill
Norton’s impalement on a wall of antlers—
would be seen in graphic detail, while shot in
a markedly restrained fashion for television.

Because of his oft-stated goal of having
SALEM’S LOT like a feature, not a TV special
(whether it was to be released theatrically or
not), Kobritz and his staff hand picked pro¬
duction personnel capable of providing the
right texture and depth under deadline pres¬
sure. Jules Brenner, who had shot the im¬
pressive NBC miniseries HELTF.R SKEL¬
TER, signed on as cinematographer; Mort
Rabinowitz, a 23-vear veteran of the film
industrv who was art director for Svdncv
Pollack’s CASTLE KEEP (for which he and
his staff built a castle in Yugoslavia) and
THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?,
was hired as production designer; and Harry
Sukman, an Oscar-winning composer (SONG
WITHOUT END), who wrote the excellent
music for SOMEONE IS WATCHING ME
and whom Kobritz describes as “a former
cohort and protege of Victor Young,” was
contracted to score SALEM’S LOT.

And Tobe Hooper was enlisted as direc¬
tor. Following a chain of events Kobritz
describes at length in his interview. Hooper
was deemed the only appropriate person to
direct SALEM’S LOT. Kobritz had screened
for himself one recent horror film after
another—usually films by highly praised
neophyte directors. Some of the features
Kobritz found intriguing. Others, like PHAN¬
TASM. he remembers with a shudder of
disbelief. None impressed him like THE
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Hooper
was called-in for a meeting with Kobritz, and
was signed.

It is important to note that the selection of
Hooper did not signify an attempt to mimic
the intensity of TEXAS CHAINSAW in a
television show, which would be frankly
impossible. Kobritz was searching for a film¬
maker with a confident visual style, a mastery
of camera movement, and an ability to follow
a script and adhere to a tight schedule. There
was, apparently, never any concern that
Hooper would not be able to direct a film
that did not contain a large quota of violence.

“I think it goes without saying that if a
man has a strong visual style and is also able
to meet those other qualifications, his skills
encompass more than the making of violent
movies,” says Kobritz. “1 knew Tobe was our
man from the day I met him. And he’s come
through like a champ.”

Hooper was signed in late spring of this
vear, and one of his first tasks was a field trip
to the location that would be used for most of
the exteriors of’Salem’s Lot. In 1977, Tony
Richardson had directed a Warner telefilm,
A DEATH IN CANAAN, which was sup¬
posed to be set in a small, contemporary
Connecticut town. Ferndale, a northern Cali¬
fornia town 16 miles south of Eureka, and 75
miles south of the Oregon border, doubled
perfectly as a bogus Connecticut location.
Anna Cottle, associate producer for SA¬
LEM’S LOT, had been Richardson’s assistant.
She remembered Ferndale—and particularly
the cooperation of the local inhabitants. After
a brief scouting trip, Ferndale was chosen for
SALEM’S LOT.

But in all of Ferndale, there was no house
which could be used as a double for Marsten
House, so Rabinowitz and his staff were

10

dispatched to FerndaJe to build one. Thev
found a cottage on a hillside overlooking
Femdale and the Salt River Valiev; it was de¬
cided to build a full-scale mock up of Marsten
House around the existing cottage complex,
complete with a stone retaining wall and
several twisted, dead trees. The family resid¬
ing in the cottage was paid $20,000 and
guaranteed all of the lumber from Marsten
House once shooting was completed.

The filming of SALEM’S LOT began on
July 10—in Femdale. “It took 20 working
days to build Marsten House from scratch,”
Rabinowitz recalls. “We put the last touches
on it very late at night before shooting was to
begin. I remember, my assistants and I were
up there painting, and someone drove on by
the road just below us. All of a sudden, he
slammed on his brakes and backed up, got
out of his car and just stood there staring at
the house. Mv God, I’ve lived here 25 years,’
he said, ‘and I never noticed that house
before!’ I played along and just said, ‘Gee, I
don’t know—we’re just tourists.”*

Rabinowitz estimates the cost of the ex¬
terior Marsten House mock-up as $100,000.
Another $70,000 was spent constructing the
interior of the house— Kobritz’s rotting em¬
bodiment of the vampire’s soul—back at the
Burbank Studios. The interior rooms and
passages of Marsten House posed the more
difficult challenge for Rabinowitz and his
staff. For one thing, there was the problem of
creating atmosphere without going over¬
board.

“It’s a very difficult line,’’ admits Rabino¬
witz. “By the nature of the writing, vou’re
going into a theatrical abstraction, and you
must take it further than normal, but not too
much further. It’s trial and error. When I
designed the interior, the first shots were way
over, which I knew they would be, and I had
to be careful in bringing them down not to
lose all the gory description and so forth.
When it’s that fine a line. I’ll intentionally go
overboard and then gradually shave it back
and back. I’d say it was two weeks from the
first still photos and testing of the color
lighting to the final result.

“I used a lot of plaster, so I could make
huge craters all over the entire set and
furniture so that it looked as though it was
pock-marked, and from some of these larger
openings in the walls I put a kind of epoxy or
resin, and let it drip as if it were oozing from
the interior, as if it were an open wound. We
wanted a rotting, sick appearance, almost as
if—in discussions with the director and pro¬
ducer—we were looking into the body, the
heart of the vampire. It reflects his whole
being moreso than just a decayed house. So
we decided to go for an abstract image.

“Then,” Rabinowitz continues, “in front
of the camera, we took the same material in
medium shots and closeups and just loaded
it up so it would ooze and pour right in front
of you. Sometimes it’s very clear and at other
times it’s not too obvious, just a little glistening

Top: Strakn drives up to Marsten House, a deserted man¬
sion with an extil history, which Barlow makes his base of
operations. This angle, which you 'll nrxrr see in the film,
shows how designer Mort Rabinowitz constructed a facade
of the house around a smaller existing structure on location
in Femdale. California. Bottom . Ned Tebbets (Barney
McFaddeni looks on in terror as Barlow (Reggie Nalder)
sweeps into his jail cell in SALEM'S LOT.

“I cleaned up my speech pattern a
little bit. I sound like a writer, a man
at home w ith words. STARSKY AND
HUTCH was always dip-dip-dip, a
street jargon and repartee, sort of
half-finished sentences. This time I
stuck with the lines and discipline
of a well-written script. There’s also
a mysterious quality to Ben Mears,
and I tried to work with that. I didn’t
socialize a lot. It was a rough part,
and in a sense I tried to let all of the
neuroses that were building up in
David Soul because of the pressure
work for the character.”

David Soul, Actor

in the background. “There’s a dark, greenish
tint to the interior. We put down glaze after
glaze after glaze, for the proper amount of
sheen, and then various shades of green, mix¬
ing it up with other colors so that it wasn’t solid
green.”

Two other important duties for Rabino-
witz were the building of the antique shop
(Straker’s business front) and the small South
American village where the beginning and end
of the film are set.

“The Latin town was shot on the Burbank
backlot and the San Fernando Valley Mis¬
sion,” says Rabinowitz. “We used the interior
of the mission church, and I built an adobe-
stvle native hut on stage.

“My decorator, Jerry Adams—who is
fantastic—was responsible for most of what
you see inside the antique shop. Ninety
percent of what you see is his taste initially
directed by me. But the individual pieces—
all Jem Adams. 1 also have an assistant, Peter
Samish, who is only 28 but is brilliant. He’s
the son of Adrian Samish, the producer and
former head of CBS—who was not popular
among many people. So Peter has not gotten
where he is because of papa; he had a very
rough time. But he was just so creative and
inventive on this picture.”

Rabinowitz, a stickler for accuracy, found
that one of his most perplexing assignments
was to come up with a coffin for Barlow. “It
was designed special,” he notes, “because
there was no way to find anything like that.
The research was difficult to come by—it’s a
400 year-old coffin —but once I did find it,
our cabinet shop and our antique shop here
is so superb that they gave me exactly what I
drew up, right on the nose. If I’d had to work
at another studio, I don’t think it would have
come out as well, because they are superb-
just the finest in our business.”

Rabinowitz tries to be a perfectionist. A
professional painter and sculptor, he has
taught at UCLA and USC, and spends six
months of each year at his Santa Fe, New
Mexico studio, painting and sculpting for
galleries. At 53, he is still excited by what he
terms “that marvelous madness that is Holly¬
wood,” and he still finds his work there a
challenge. For SALFM’S LOT, in the rush of
production for television, there are things he
would do over if time allowed.

“There is one interior of the Glick boy’s
bedroom,” Rabinowitz confesses “where I
overdid the color and blew the gag. I abso-

lutelv telegraphed it by making the room a
sombre brown, so when the scene opens
you’re in that mood already. Then, when the
vampire arrives, it’s not as big a surprise. It’s
still a very effective scene, but I'd have toned
down my part of it more.”

In his interview. Hooper speaks of Ra¬
binowitz with genuine awe. Rabinowitz
worked closely with Hooper, and feels he
developed an understanding of his person¬
ality. “He’s very good-natured, extremely
so,” savs Rabinowitz, “very warm, but very
laid back. He’s quite shy. But once he gains
your confidence and you gain his, that stops.
Was he articulate? With me, yes. He was very
articulate. With others, not so much. It took
time. It’s a personality kind of thing. But he
knows exactly what he wants.”

But getting what he wants was another
matter entirely for Hooper, particularly in
the case of David Soul, who was also under
pressure to perform. According to Soul,
Hooper was articulate in relating to him what
he wanted.

“I believe he is a good actor’s director and
I believe he will be even moreso,” observes
Soul. “I think the problems of this film,
which were primarily the special effects, the
vampire obviously, and the fact that we were
shooting out of continuity, made it difficult
for him to spend the kind of time with the
actors he’d have liked to.

“Many, many times we’d pull each other
aside to talk and he’d say, ‘Goddammit,
David, I’m sorry we can’t spend more time
working out these relationships, but this just
isn’t the time to do it—so just hang in there.’
He was concerned that everybody on the set
was happv. He’s a very gentle, very, ven¬
tlight man. This picture, if nothing else, will
seal his future, as an important director along
with the Steven Spielbergs, thejohn Carpen¬
ters, the John Badhams—people like that.”

Soul, who was cast two months before the
stan of production, was able to make sug¬
gestions that helped define his character a
little better, but he feels some inconsisten¬
cies remain.

“Yes, there are a lot of inconsistencies,
built into the script because the producers
felt that since it’s television, there needs to be
this reiteration of the fears on Ben Mears’
p arl _so the audience is constantly aware.
That for me is not giving the picture every¬
thing it could have. There are only so many
times Ben Mears can say, ‘Did you ever have
the feeling something is inherently evil?’, you
know? There are a million other wavs to say
that same thing. I much prefer the scenes
such as the entrance of Straker with his cane,
w hich comes far closer to creating true terror
than dialogue can.”

The scene with the cane—the first meet¬
ing of Mears and Straker—helps illuminate
Soul’s working relationship with Mason.

“There was a certain kind of awe to my
working with Mason,” Soul explains, “and I
used that for the relationship between the
two characters: Mears is intimidated by Strak¬
er. It sounds simplistic, but it works. I did not
try to get to know Mason better, so it was as if,
in my early scenes with him, this imposing
stranger could be the evil coming from the
house. And only as we got further into the
picture did my curiosity as David Soul —and
certainly as Ben Mears—manifest itself in a
kind of relationship with the character. So I

kept away from him in the beginning. Also,
the way Tobe staged our scenes heightened
the element of surprise. The scene where I
meet him as he’s walking with the cane is very
well staged by Tobe, because I’m staring at
the house and feeling all those disturbing
sensations and memories and I back out
almost out of the shot and then” —Soul
gasps—“there he is behind me. These kinds
of cinematic devices helped a lot, and that s
Tobe.

“I was impressed by both Tobe and
Mason. There were a lot of impressive people
on this film, actors especially. Lew Ayres was
the same as Mason in a way, though he was a
little difficult to crack. He’s a very orthodox
and tough actor. He was a matinee idol, and
he considers himself still to be a star. But
once that was broken down, it became a very
warm relationship.

“Mason is fascinating. He’s better than
most TV actors and he’s also a personality.
He’s got a mystique that he’s built up fortv
vears and that’s what you’re watching also,
and what you’re playing opposite. I was
surprised to find out how organically he
works—he had a whole history for Straker.
His conversations about the character were
verv- intelligent.

“How did I change my ow n TV personal¬
ity and still play a hero? It’s a good question. I
don’t have a pat answer. Obviously, they’re
different characters. I think the accoutre¬
ments changed me somewhat—the glasses,
the clothes. Also, I cleaned up my speech
pattern a little bit. I sound like a writer, a man
who’s at home with words. In STARSKY
AND HUTCH, it was always dip-dip-dip,
sort of half-finished sentences, a street jargon
and repartee. This time, I stuck with the lines
and the discipline of a well-written script.
There’s also a mysterious quality to Ben
Mears and I tried to w-ork with that. I didn t
socialize a lot. It w-as a rough part, and in a
sense, I let the neuroses that were building up
in David Soul because of the pressure work
for the character.

“That’s one area in which Tobe was very-
helpful and understanding. He listened.

“Have I seen THE TEXAS CHAINSAW
MASSACRE? No, but I do want to, very-
much, after working with Tobe.”

Hooper, who’s career literally reached a
standstill a year after his arrival in Holly¬
wood, is a living testament to the difficulty of
maintaining a career in the horror genre.
Shortly* before he was approached by Kobritz
for SALEM’S LOT. Hooper had even met
with Italian producers over the possibility of
directing THE GUYANA MASSACRE, be¬
fore his agent blew the whisde on the project
(“God bless him,” Hooper now savs).

Hooper openly admits that SALEM’S
LOT pulled him from obscurity.

“Look,” savs Hooper, “this is a quantum
leap for me. SALEM’S LOT is mv best
picture, and there’s no question about it. It’s
a major studio production, I’m working with
a fantastic cast and crew. And Kobritz is
wonderful. This is a first for me.”

But is it the same Tobe Hooper in SA¬
LEM’S LOT that we saw in THE TEXAS
CHAINSAW MASSACRE or even EATEN
ALIVE? Can the same audacious spirit run
through something created for televisipn?

“Oh, I think so,” Hooper replies. “For
one thing, my sty le is ingrained in me. It does

12

not change. It improves, perhaps, but it does
not change. Also, SALEM’S LOT does not
rely on the same kind of dynamics as CHAIN¬
SAW. It is scary, it is atmospheric, but in a
different way; I do not have to cheat the
audience to bring it to television.

“The sty le of my films is not their violence.
Violence has sometimes been an ingredient
in them, but because I shoot it a certain way,
people may have thought that is the sty le all
by itself. You know, I made a number of short
and feature films before I entered the genre
with TEXAS CHAINSAW, and they didn’t
contain violence, but my sty le was develop¬
ing nonetheless in each of those films.

“Part of the idea of SALEM’S LOT is to
bring the audience into the movement, in a
way; the camera moves almost constantlv. I
am leading the audience on, but I’m satisfy¬
ing them, too—I’m not cheating them.
They’re not going to expect a dollar’s worth
of scare and get 75c worth of talk. And you
can do that w ithout slicing someone up with a
chainsaw.”

In fact, there is relatively little dialogue in
SALEM’S LOT. The narrative is advanced
primarily in cinematic terms through camera
movement and editing, and through scenes
that establish perspective in a strictlv visual
way. Kobritz’s desire for this efTect—and his
need for a director who could add to his and
Monash’s ideas, not just cam’ them out—was
the main impetus behind the hiring of Tobe
Hooper.

One of Hooper’s most striking scenes of
barely glimpsed violence is the murder of Dr.
Bill Norton by Straker, who picks him up and
heaves him across a room into a wall imbed¬
ded with antlers. Hooper’s camera carries the
audience right along with Norton, holding
on a close shot of Norton’s horrorstruck face
up to and including the moment of impact.
Because the actual impalement is not seen in
a wide shot, the scene is technicallv acceptable
for network TV, and Hooper’s surprise trick
of dragging the audience along on the victim’s
death ride assures both shock and terror.

In another sequence. Hooper and his
special effects team employ a coffin* s-eye-
view of the inside of a grave, to involve the
audience in the resurrection of one of the
Glick brothers.

In his interview, Kobritz explains the
mechanics of two of SALEM’S LOTs most
elaborate effects: the vampires’ contact lenses
and the shot-in-reverse levitation scenes.
Hooper discusses their emotional quality.

“I invented those,” Hooper savs, “work¬
ing with the make-up and special effects
people. The one with the eves has to do with
hypnotism. I was going for an effect that
would implicate the audience—again, I guess
it’s my interest in psychology —rather than
have them walk out of the room for a drink
when the vampire turns to hvpnotize some¬
one. Those are generally verv boring, pre¬
dictable scenes.

Top: Mark Petrie ( lance Keru'in) and Ben Mean (David
Soul). haggard and worn from their nightmarish experi¬
ence in 5,1 LEM'S TOT. find solace inside a small hamlet
church in (Guatemala, as the film opens. Bottom: The body
of Marjorie Glick (Clarissa Kaye) comes back to life in the
mortuan. and attacks Dr. Bill Xorton (Ed Flanders) and
Ben Mean, who have been keeping a vigil over it. As Ben
touches her with a cross made from tu*o wooden tongue de¬
pressors. she vaporizes before their eyes.

“ I studied what I had hern exposed to as a
film student and moviegoer, from the old
Universals all the way up to the Hammer
Films. No matter how you try to explain
those away or make allowances, it’s always
just Chris Lee with those damned bloodshot
eves. I knew our hypnotism would have to be
something that is not easy for an audience to
comprehend. Well, we’ve all had bloodshot
eves. So what we came up with was a kind of
contact lens that just glows and glows and
follows you, and is obviously not an optical
done in the lab, and is therefore strange and
fascinating to look at.

“The result is that it makes you look in his
eves, too, and you just wonder and look and
look and look.”

And the levitation scene, in which the
vampires float through the window to pro¬
spective victims?

“Well, I’m sorry they told you so much
about that. Damn! That’s the kind of thing
that should also make you guess, so you’re
riveted to your seat. It’s one of those devices
that ought to be revealed after you’ve seen
the picture. But since they’ve told you. . .

“The business of bringing the kid into the
room on a boom crane eliminates the use of
wires, and if you keep the camera in a certain
position, keep the kid moving so you’re
distracted from guessing or trving to guess
how the cfTeci was done—which is unlikely
anvwav— and you cut properly, it’s very
disturbing. It’s just obvious there are no
wires. I also had an ectoplasmic mist sur¬
rounding him, and issuing in a kind of
vacuum from him to his victim and back
again.”

The levitation effect was also enriched by
shooting in reverse, which made the ecto¬
plasmic fog swirl in an eerie way.

But how will all of this look on a big
screen? With everyone involved with the
production stressing that SALEM’S LOT is a
feature, not just a television special, it seems
a logical question.

“This piece was not made with a lot of
concessions to TV, beyond the obvious limit¬
ing of the use of violence,” Hooper replies.
“There has been some second unit shooting,
about five days I think, for some of the special
effects. These are physical effects, as you
called them before, not opticals— there are
no cheap opticals designed for the TV screen.
The photography is very good, Mort Rabino-
witz’s art direction is just remarkable; SA¬
LEM’S LOT will look like a feature.”

SALEM’S LOT wrapped shooting on Au¬
gust 29. Hooper assembled his rough cut
within a couple of weeks after. CBS has
alreadv begun to promote the miniseries,
and will air it on two successive nights during
either the November ratings “sweep” (when
network ratings are closely monitored to
determine future advertising rates—and the
best specials are consequently televised) or a
date soon after.

And way up in Center Lovell, Maine, the
author of SALEM’S LOT is awaiting the
production’s telecast like the rest of us.

“I thought THE TEXAS CHAINSAW
MASSACRE was a great movie, and I like the
screenplay ihev’ve come up with for this, so
I’m looking forward to it,” says Stephen King.

“What I’d really like them to do is send
me a videotape of the European version. I’d
be very into that.” □

TOBE

HOOPER

Director

“The camerawork is almost always
moving. I mean, incredible booms,
dolly shots, epic Atlas Apollo moon
shots that sweep away very' quickly
from the interior of Marsten House
to show you the scale of the place.
You won’t believe your eyes.”

For all his efforts to become a mainstream
Hollywood filmmaker, Tobe (pronounced
Tow-bee) Hooper remains an enigma. The
controversy caused by THE TEXAS CHAIN¬
SAW MASSACRE (1974), his second feature,
created an underground cult reputation for
him even before he abandoned his native
Texas for California. The strange and sporadic
distribution of the film, the folding of the
company originally licensed to release it
(after the conviction of its officers in the
DEEP THROAT obscenity case), and the
resultant “disappearance” of millions of dol¬
lars in rental receipts, all contributed foot¬
notes to the bizarre history of its director. The
release of Hooper’s first Hollywood movie,
EATEN ALIVE (which he had filmed as
DEATH TRAP) a year later did not make his
cinematic vision more accessible to the pub¬
lic; even some of his staunchest defenders felt
it clouded nuances that had been crvstallized
in THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

At the time of TEXAS CHAINSAW’s
release, it was difficult even to ascertain
Hooper’s age; he was variously described as a
man in his late 20s to mid-30s. Hooper now
gives his age as 33. He studied cinematog¬
raphy and music in Texas, and made two
feature-length films—a PBS documentary on
Peter, Paul and Marv, and a psychedelic an
film called EGGSHELLS—before a carefully
calculated move into modern, commercial
horror with TEXAS CHAINSAW. Significant¬
ly, the least publicized aspect of Hooper’s
background —his interest in psychology-
supplies perhaps the most forceful current to
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Hooper is one of several young, contem¬
porary filmmakers— Brian DePalma and John
Carpenter among them—who acknowledge
a debt to Alfred Hitchcock. But Hooper
realizes that Hitchcock’s ability to shock is in
many wavs the least of his gifts; Hitchcock is
one of a handful of filmmakers who, early in
his career, integrated a mastery of technique
with a strong story sense. However powerful
DePalma and Carpenter’s films may occa¬
sionally be, they have until recently, remained
essentially derivative. Hooper, on the other
hand, has fused his technical skills with the
deep psychological base of his films, and
virtually created a new genre.

Hooper lives in Los Angeles with his 13-
vear-old son (“I’m divorced. . . I was married
verv young and I’ve been divorced about

eight years”). He openly admits that producer
Richard Kobritz’s call for him to direct
SALEM’S LOT rescued him from obscurity.
Most articulate when discussing the technical
side of his films. Hooper speaks slowly, with a
deep, gravelly voice that projects a low-key
charm. He describes his present career stage
with just one sentence: "It’s the second act.”

You were announced to direct THE DARK —
and now it's out under John Bud Cardos ’ signature.
What happened?

It was an unpleasant and totally impos¬
sible situation.There was a conspiracy where
the first assistant director (Cardos), who was a
friend, had shot a picture before for these
people and actually had been promised this
one. But Bill Devane wanted me, and so did
the associate producer [Igo Ranter), and the
actual producer (Edward L. Montoro), who
produced GRIZZLY, THE DAY OF THE
ANIMALS, and had re-edited and distributed
BEYOND THE DOOR. But this producer
and I had a conflict that would occur daily.
He had a vision, and I had a vision, and they
clashed. I found myself not wanting to be a
traffic cop. . .and consequently, I was not.
So I shot about four days of the picture after
prepping it. In four days, I had probably five
major arguments. The crew had been hand
selected without my consideration, and they
were the assistant’s crew. Alter a while, I saw
the man (Cardos) studying the script, and
then I knew what his thinking was. I was
calling my agent every few minutes. The
producer (Montoro) should have directed the
movie. He did not confine his interests to
storv planning. He interrupted something
that was a very personal, very specific, well
thought out, well learned through hardship
style. My vision of film is stylistic—which
does not exclude commercialism. There’s no
reason why a commercial picture cannot also
be a dynamite film. And the times we’re in
right now, it takes something to get those kids
into the local theatre. However, it’s also a
matter of having, once you get them in there,
a degree of credibility.

There was talk that you had and lost a Universal
Pictures contract, and then you dropped from sight
until now and SALEM'S LOT.

You may not know I had a history with
SALEM’S LOT for four years. I had an oppor¬
tunity to come and work for Warner Bros on a
yearly contract to develop something. Well,
there was this book, SALEM’S LOT—and
this was before Stephen King got real hot. But
there was a conflict because Billy Friedkin, a
friend of mine and one of my major mentors,
was at Universal. I made the decision to go to
Universal because of Billy. Anyway, things
didn’t work out at all for any of us at Universal
at the time. The timing was wrong. I spent 18
months on two scripts—genre scripts—which
were never filmed. They were development
deals. The majors will give young, promising
talent a development deal, and if it meets
their expectations, or their standards, or what
thev had for lunch, you can acquire from
them an interest. Then you’re on to some¬
thing else and another script. I did two scripts
over an 18-month period of waiting and
politicking and so forth. In the meantime,
Billy left and came to Warners. Also, SALEM'S
LOT had come up again there. I had gone to
work on a project at Universal with Turman
and Foster that did not work out—for any-

14

one, there’s no had guvs connected, it just
didn’t work—and so the motion picture
division at Warners called me one more time,
and with Stirling Silliphant producing and
writing at that time, they asked if I could get
Ned Tannen at Universal to loan me out so I
could come over and work with Stirling. Billv
finallv suggested that he produce and I direct
SALEM’S LOT and I said that sounds terrific.
Well, before the project got moving it fell
through and SALEM’S LOT went to televi¬
sion. That was the last I heard for a long
time—until Richard Kobritz called me.

How do you feel about working m television?

Well, when SALEM’S LOT was transferred
to television I remember thinking that, actu¬
ally, because of he way the book is constructed
as a story, television is a good format for it.
It’s a long story, and it’s fragmented, and you
acquire the information that makes vou
respond cumulatively. And making it longer
enables you to get most of the punches in.
Kobritz is also a wonderful producer, Mon
Rabinowitz is an incredible production de¬
signer— I’m so impressed with him it’s unbe¬
lievable. and I hope he’s available for every¬
thing I do—and of course there’s the cast,
who were so receptive and inventive.

How dul you get on with James Mason? l)o you
think he came away feeling he’d worked with a solid
director?

I do absolutely. He didn’t sav anvthing to
me so much as to my mother. I brought my
mother around a bit. Mason and his wife
spent a little time with her, and took a liking
to her. I got more information back through
my mother than Mason. But he showed,
when we worked, a remarkable professional¬
ism and a creative and inventive qualitv that
complemented what I wanted. I had a verv
warm relationship with all of the cast. I’m not
just a technician, even though my background
is cinematography, editing and music. That is
now second nature to me, and mv new
wonder is the construction of human behav¬
ior. I was always interested in characteriza¬
tion, but what I’m saying is it is now a
priority, because the technical aspect—mv
style— is already ingrained. The thing I love is
working with so many talented people because
they can invent and bring so much to their
work. That’s what I love— not just being a
filmmaker, but a director. I aspire to being
an actor’s director. And again, that does not
diminish the technical style of the picture.

l)o you still feel Hitchcock is the bestT

Well, I love Hitchcock. I love his films. He
inspired me as a teacher of film language. But
I feel now that his strong point was his film
language and not the humanity ora displavof
genius in terms of relationships. To break
that down very simply—genius as a techni¬
cian, lack of genius in performance. Even
though he has used tremendous actors, it
seems as though thev have had to confine
themselves because of the technical side of
the movie. I’m trving not to work that wav—
although my film language mav somewhat

Top: Filming Danny (Click's (Hrad Savagel attack on
gravedigger Mike Ryerson (Geoffrey Lewis). Tobe Hooper
directs at extreme left. Lor the action, supposedly taking
place inside an open grave. Hooper filmed from above,
over the shoulder and from the side (shown here). Bottom:
Susan Xorfon (Bonnie Bedelia) inside Marsten House.
Production designer Mort Rabinowitz "dirtied-up” the
house sets to make them mirror Barlow's festering soul.

“Because of the way SALEM’S LOT
is constructed as a story, television
is a good format for it. I t’s long, and
it’s fragmented, and you acquire
information in such a way that the
impact is cumulative. And making it
longer enables you to get most of
the punches in.”

Tobe Hooper, Director

resemble Hitchcocks because I loved his
movements and the way he got into points of
view and discovery and timing.

Is there a sweep to the camera movements in
SALEM'S LOTT

The camera is almost always moving. I
mean, incredible booms, dolly shots, epic
Adas Apollo moon shots that sweep away
verv quickly from the interior of the Marsten
House to show you the epic scale of the
house. You won’t believe your eyes. There’s a
staircase equal to if not larger than the one in
GONE WITH THE WIND —the Memphis
mansion, not Tara. The staircase almost goes
into infinity'. But besides that, the construction
of the whole interior is somewhat like CITI¬
ZEN KANE. It’s so massive that you can walk
into the fireplaces, it has strange things you
don’t expect to sec* at all. It’s all pock-marked
with oozing craters in the wall, reallv horrify¬
ing stuff.

What did Mason say when he saw thatT

Oh. Mason loved it. But the way l played
Mason was for a contrast in what he looked
like and what he did. He is immaculate, never
a blemish on him. a very well-tailored man
and a pleasing fellow. And inside that house
of decay it’s an incredible contrast, as well as
Mason—I should say St raker—enjoying him¬
self and what he’s doing. It’s really a shocking
bit of chemistry when you see a kindly actor, a
prestigious man carrying a black bundle
wrapped in plastic through the bulkhead
doors and into the cellar of the Marsten
House, and very pleased, you see, almost
with the expression of the cat that ate the
canarv. he unfolds this little dead child on the
dining room tabic*, and is quite proud of him¬
self—you can almost sec* the tail feathers of
the canarv sticking out of his mouth. The con¬
trast is so frightening it’s wonderful. And that
was just one of mavbe a hundred little* bits that
Mason did.

How was David Soul to work with?

1 was shocked. He’s not like his television
series; he’s quite talented—this is a new
David Soul.

You seem pretty happy with SALEM ’S LOT.

Oh. listen I laughs), there's only one like it.
It's an actual epic. I sav epic in the sense that
it’s long like GONE WITH THE WIND, it
has a large cast, it looks like a multi-million
dollar spectacle—which it is. It’s the epic
piece of its genre.

Do you see it as an updating of DRAG ULA —
with the character interaction and a central figure
whose presence is felt even when he isn't seen?

In a sense. But it also bridges that credi¬
bility gap and takes you over from a situation
that is meant to be an enchantment with the
past, into the present in the return of Ben
Mears— David Soul—to ’Salem’s Lot. He re¬
turns but not altogether innocently.

Did you catch the similarities between the house
in CHAINSAW and Marsten HouseT

Oh. of course. In a way, that was deliberate.
The house occupies a space that is unique
and has a magnetic power that seems to
identify with the negative side of human
nature. The house we built is about five times
larger than the Universal backlot PSYCHO
house.

Is the European theatrical of SALEM'S LOI
more explicitT

It's a little more explicit. This piece does
not stand or fall on that kind of dynamics- it
doesn’t need that. This film is verv spooky —
it suggests things and always has the overtone
of the grave. It affects you differently than my
other horror films. It’s more soft-shelled. A
television movie does not have blood or
violence. It has atmosphere which creates
something you cannot escape—the reminder
that our time is limited and all the accoutre¬
ments that go with it, such as the visuals.

Did the combination of working with big stars for
the first time and the short TV schedule present
problemsT

Yes, but I overcame most of them. I
completed the picture in 37 days. That’s like
shooting two major features in one-quarter
the time vou’d normally take. It caused
conflicts. But most of the people were willing
to help. We worked long hours, we did not
work eight-to-five. I mean, we really worked
The reason I sound so wiped out is I’m trying
to recover from working two months on three
hours sleep a night. I’m exhausted—but this
film was very necessary for me. It is a feature.
It is not by any stretch of the imagination a
conventional television show. It’s really
packed, it’s loaded, and I’m proud of it.

How many camera set-ups were you doing a
dayT

It’s hard to sav, we were working so fast.
I’d say between 35-to-40.

That's like a throwback to the Roger Gorman
pace.

It was murder. We were tying up two
stages, and we’d jump from one to the other.
We also used local locations for interiors, to
match exterior locations in northern Califor¬
nia.

This is a big career jump for you right into the
mainstream. You were rescued. Your name was even
mentioned in connection with a Guyana film at one
point.

Oh, sure, I went to Rome to meet those
guvs and maybe do the Guyana piece. And
God bless him, my agent, John Gaines, said
“Absolutely not.’’

Do you have anything lined up after SALEM'S
LOT? Are they genre?

I have three things to select from now.
And thev split the difference between genre
and non-genre. I'm moving from the genre
in an intelligent way. I think. One leap and it’s
riskv. I love and respect the genre, and I’m
delighted bv its success and the respect —to a
degree—that is being given to it finally. I’ll
never turn mv back on it. What I’m interested
in doing now, though, is what I indirectly
suggested to you before—something with
dynamic human character relationships. And
of course it will still have a strong story', a
suspenseful story. I do, however, want to
concentrate on characterization. But don’t
worry— I don’t think you’ll find me directing
a nice little parlor comedy with a group of
people sitting around talking. Not unless
they’re discussing the destruction of the
world. D

RICHARD

KOBRITZ

Producer

Richard Kobritz is a creative producer in
the Thalbergian sense. He is, in other words,
a benign monarch. He believes in hiring the
most talented cast and crew available to him,
establishing the ground rules before shoot¬
ing begins, then setting them loose to do their
best work. As vice-president for production
at Warner Bros Television, Kobritz monitors
all of the studio’s TV output, a task which
onlv allows him time to personally produce
one film a year.

Stong- willed producers are, of course,
nothing new in television, where individual
expression is stifled and a director’s person-
alitv is no more evident in a weekly series than
in the commercials that interrupt it. But Ko-
brit/. apparently, is different than most pro¬
ducers. His need for control is less a matter of
ego than a desire to create a quality produc¬
tion. Kobritz trusts his intuition and wants to
surround himself with collaborators who
agree with his basic concept, vet will not
hesitate to offer suggestions or changes. The
measure of his formula’s success is that Tobe
Hooper, still reeling from disastrous pro¬
ducer interference on two features and a
fruitless 18 months at Universal Pictures,
emerged from SALEM’S LOT with nothing
but praise for Kobritz.

Kobritz entered the film industry in 19b4
at age 23 He worked as an assistant director
on several Doris Day comedies, then served
as production manager on three films directed
bv Gene Kellv: A GUIDE FOR THE MAR
RIED MAN, HELLO DOLLY and THE
CHEYENNE SOCIALCLUB. He toiled brief¬
ly as a producer in the exploitation field for a
few small companies, notably Fanfare, a
now-defunct outfit. “F.vcrthing you’d do for a
company like Fanfare was horror in some
wav, shape or form,’’ says Kobritz, who
remembers the unreleased HOT SUMMER
WEEK as representative of the firm’s exploita¬
tion horror product.

Kobritz later worked as an associate pro¬
ducer for director Martin Ritt on “a couple of
features,” including CONRACK «1974), star¬
ring Jon Voight. He has also been under
contract to Twentieth Century- Fox, for whom
he produced a number of television pilots.

You produced John Carpenter’s SOMEONE IS
WATCHING ME

Right—which was called HIGH RISE
when we shot it. The network changed it.

It didn't look like an NRG made-for-teleiision
movie. It had a much more distinctive style. A lot of
NBC's TV movies all tend to look like THE
ROCKFORD FILES.

That’s obviously intentional on our part,
and I think you’ll find the same thing is true
of SALEM’S LOT. I only personally do cfneof
these a year, because i’m also in charge of
production here, which doesn’t permit me to

16

do more. I guess I’ve got a few rules. Number
one is I try to find a director who has never
directed television, and who has probably
never directed a union film, but who has
directed a non-union feature—in Carpen¬
ter’s case DARK STAR and ASSAULT ON
PRECINCT 13, and in Tobe Hooper’s case
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

It’s kind of a strange process I go through.
It’s hard to find something you really want to
do if you don’t have to do one, so you tend to
be choosy within vour own parameters. I
generally gravitate toward the same kind of
material, you know, horror, terror, something
like that in a kind of Hitchcockian mold. To
put it that way sounds very egotistical, but I
don’t mean it like that; I’m just trying to get us
into clear categories. Anyway, once I find that
material we progress to the screenplay and in
the meantime I try to see every movie I can,
try to come up with somebody who is young
. . .and who is inexperienced with all of the
problems of working a heavily unionized
major studio operation.

Why is that?

Because I’m looking for somebody who is
visual, who isn’t wasting his time worrying
about the politics of what the unions are
doing—that’s my job. More than anything
else I want a director who is visual, who
knows how to tell it in terms of camera, not in
terms of dialogue, or not in terms of conven¬
tional camera coverage. There are two rules I
always stress, and in both John and Tobe’s
case, they not only embraced what I said, but
that’s the way they would have done it
anyway. I don’t want a zoom lens on that
camera. . .and I want to keep that camera
moving. That’s, unfortunately, become the
way of television. So what I try to do is a small
feature within a short shooting schedule—
which is difficult, but that’s television.

What changes did you have to make in the novel
in scripting SALEM’S LOT for teleihsion?

We went with the concept of a really
unattractive, horrible-looking Barlow. We
went back to the old German NOSFERATU
concept where he is the essence of evil, and
not anything romantic or smarmy, or, you
know, the rouge-cheeked, widow-peaked
Dracula. I wanted nothing suave or sexual,
because I just didn’t think it’d work; we’ve
seen too much of it. The other thing we did
with the character which I think is an improve¬
ment is that Barlow does not speak. When
he’s killed at the end, he obviously emits
sounds, but it’s not even a full line of
dialogue, in contrast to the book and the first
draft of the screenplay. I just thought it would
be suicidal on our part to have a vampire that
talks. What kind of voice do you put behind a
vampire? You can’t do Bela Lugosi, or you’re
going to get a laugh. You can’t do Regan in
THE EXORCIST, or you’re going to get
something that’s unintelligible, and besides,
vou’ve been there before. That’s whv I think

Top: A shot you won 7 iff when SALEM ‘5 LOT is t elf cast
by CBS this \ovrmber. Dr. Bill Xorton (Ed Flanders)
impaled on a wall o) antlers in the upper hall of Marsten
House. On television the sequence will be framed on a
reaction close-up of Hander's face as Straker seizes him
and hurls him against the wall. The full shot shown here is
being reserved for the film's theatrical release overseas.
Bottom: Producer Richard Kobritz (right) with director
Tobe Hooper during filming. Kobritz personally selected
Hooper to helm the miniseries to give it a non-TV look.

“We didn’t fly our vampires in on
wires, because even in the best of
films you can see them. We wanted
to get a feeling of floating. And the
effect is horrific, because you know
there are no wires. It has a very
spooky, eerie quality to it.”

Richard Kobritz, Producer

the James Mason role of Straker became all
the more important. And he is. I must say.
perfect. That sounds like puffery, but he was
well worth it. We wondered if he would be
available, if he would be attracted to the
material. . . and he was available, and he
loved the material. It’s just an incredibly
good piece of casting. We were fortunate. It’s
a very good part, but he gives it so much
himself—he’s such a classy actor.

What was Stirling Silliphant's involvement?
He’s listed as executive producer. Did he also do a
script at any time?

He wrote a script for the theatrical version,
which was never used—and of course, it was
not used for this one. In fact, he has nothing
to do with this picture. There is an agreement
with the studio because of his prior involve¬
ment with the project. He made some en¬
couraging phone calls, and I think showed up
a couple of times to say hello to people, but
he has nothing to do with the production.

/ understand there's a Writers’ Guild arbitration
underuay challenging Monash’s solo credit on the
scnpt.

We should know the outcome of that
soon. No other scripts were ever considered.
Monash was never even offered the other
material. Obviously, the source is the same—
everybody read the book, everybody wrote
his own screenplay. This is the one we went
with. I would hope Paul would get sole credit.
Of the three other what we’d call “contributing
writers,’’ Stirling Silliphant has not protested.
Bob Cetchell has not protested, it’s just this
Larry Cohen. . . who had a really lousy
screenplay. That was back before we were
ever involved with it, back when the feature
depanment had this very hot book, went
through three screenplays and could do
nothing with it.

What other changes were made from book to
screenplay?

The changes we wrought from Paul’s
original draft—which was very much like the
book—to what we ended up with from him
make for a very classy movie. The major
changes included Barlow, and that the Mar-
sten House must never be clean and immac¬
ulate inside like Straker is. The house was
very crucial; it must look like a veritable
cesspool. I even put the line in the script
myself that it must look like a shithole, only
being that graphic just to get the point across.

I wanted the audience to say, how could this
man of Edwardian dignity live in such a
place? And yet he does. And the third point
was not to have Barlow in Eva Miller’s cellar
as he was in the book at the end. It just doesn’t
work. I mean, from a point of sheer construc¬
tion in a well-written screenplay, he’s got to
reside inside the Marsten House. He’s a
major star in the picture— the third or fourth
most important character—he’s got to be
there. It may have worked in the book, but
not in the movie. That house is the essence of

evil—God knows, Ben Mears talks about it till
he’s blue in the face—so to me that was very
important. And—one last thing—I pushed
the death of the last vampire to the end of the
film. There were three violent deaths right in
a row—Straker, Barlow and her—and all of a
sudden, the killing and the device of killing
became a really. . . nothing, you know? So I
changed that.

In what way does the inside of the house resemble
a cesspool?

It is a house of horrors. . .1 don’t mean
with ghosts and that, I mean the dirtiest,
filthiest house you’ve ever seen, as opposed
to being pristine, which it is in the book. I like
that dichotomy of Straker being immacu¬
lately dressed all the time, without a piece of
lint on his lapel, and yet you walk into this
mansion with him—the interior we created
on a stage—and you know the plumbing
doesn’t work, the walls fairly seep with mois¬
ture, and you say to yourself they must
defecate on the floors and in the comers
because you know there are no bathrooms in
here. And that all adds to it. I just couldn’t
believe the beautiful Victorian Gothic mansion
in the book— it was like the last scene in 2001,
and I felt that would play against the horror.
It worked well in the book, it w'ouldn’t work
for us. I believe that to be a distinct improve¬
ment, I really do.

One of the gossip magazines said David Soul
was dunking on the set.

No— I didn’t notice any of that. It’s a very
difficult script in that there is very little
dialogue and the story is very intense. The
pressure was hard on him. I even told him
one day, “Let the neuroses play— it’s working
for the character.” He was not doing a
normal script, with a lot of dialogue and
everything explained. He was doing a very
serious genre piece, dealing a lot in effects. I
don’t mean special effects only, but where
scenes tied into other scenes because we’re
going for a special optical and stufTlikc that.
In the same w'av that Carv Grant could
question, in NORTH BY NORTHWEST,
“Why does my character react this way? I
would never be walking into a wheat field in
my suit” —and finding five very logical rea¬
sons why not to do it. But that unfortunately
is the wav it has to be done. That’s the w hole
thing with that THIRTY-NINE STEPS, SAB¬
OTEUR, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, MAN
WHO KNEW TOO MUCH genre of Hitch¬
cock. By the same token, we were going for a
genre piece here that was not always explain¬
able in normal script language and normal
dialogue, and I’m sure that would be very
frustrating to an actor who takes his work
seriously.

Did you realize how much Lance Kerwtn and
Soul would look alike?

Yeah, but they really don’t. They’re both
blonde, but, David is incredibly so— he’s this
blonde, beautiful, California young man.
Lance is also lighthaired, but there’s this
astonishing kind of forlorn, haunted expres¬
sion to him. And he’s a remarkable young
actor, without a doubt the most talented
young actor I’ve ever worked with. He is
good, that boy, because there’s an innate
sadness—not as a person, but as an actor.
He’s able to portray a depth and a profundity
you just don’t find in kids that young.

You mentioned effects a moment ago. Were there
a lot of opt teals, or mostly physical effects?

Almost all physical effects, very few' opti-
cals. It’s not a picture where w'e’re going to
spend weeks with miniatures or in post¬
production ironing out the details in the
opticals.

There’s a superimposition of Barlow's face on the
moon in the last page of the scnpt . .

Yeah, I wrote that. We’re testing it and
we’ll see if it w'orks out. I put that in myself as
a blue page, only because I kept thinking of it
and finally I decided, why not? Let’s have a
final little laugh at the end. For the rest of the
picture there’s no laughs at all, and this is
kind of cynical and a little ironic.

Another effect is the disintegration of Barlow-
will we see that? On TV, usually you see it but it’s so
abbreviated—

I know. I hope you see it. We shot it.
That’s obviously out of my hands, but the
network approved the script and it’s in there.

There’s a still of Ed Flanders impaled to a wall of
antlers. / can’t imagine how we’ll see—

You will not see that. You’ll see what’s in
the script—w’e fly up to the wall w ith him and
the moment of impact is in his face. The long
shot would be strictly for European theatrical,
like the stakings.

How did you show the town burning at the end?

We never show it. . . for two reasons, (a)
we didn’t have the money to show' it properly;
and (b) it’s too time-consuming to show that.

I really want to wrap the picture by that time.

I think the audience has caught up with us as
far as what vampires are, the killing of
vampires, the appearance of vampires; in a
sense w'e must now go to the ending in
Guatemala as quickly as possible.

A not her change was the use ofhawthome instead
of garlic.

Yeah, you know why? I was tired of garlic.
And I was tired of every' cheap joke, is it
gonna be an Italian vampire, all that kind of
stuff. So I said, let’s go with something a little
different, and our research people came up
with hawthorne. I’m just tired of all the
NIGHT GALLERY business where you hold
up garlic and he says, “I’m not Italian,” or a
crucifix and he says, “But I’m Jewish”—I just
didn’t want to get near a line like that, to wind
up with an unintentional laugh at a moment
when I definitely don’t want it.

You obviously did more than just "produce.”
Were you on the set?

Constantly.

And that didn’t bother Hooper?

Not at all. I don’t want to put words in his
mouth here, but I think it added a bit of
security. It was a very' good collaboration.
Things were discussed when we shot, before
we shot. It was a very' close relationship. I’m
sure that doesn’t happen much.

A nd you shot on location.

Yes, during July we shot two weeks in
Ferndale, just outside of Eureka, sort of a
New* England Victoriana villge, about 100
miles south of the northern California border.
Then w’e came back here and shot an addi¬
tional six.

The location bungs to mind HA R VEST HOME,
the SBC minisenes based on Thomas Tryon ‘s book.
That was like four hours of boredom with a half¬
hearted climax. Did you see it?

I did, and that was my feeling, too,
unfortunately. Again. I think we have better
material going in. Number one, the screen¬
play is better. They just had Bette Davis and
were hanging their hat on one performance.

18

What we’ve tried to do in everything from our
vampires to our head vampire was to be
different. We’re using a remarkable contact
lens which is like half a ping pong ball, fits
over the whole eve, and can only be w'orn for
15 minutes at a time before it has to be
removed to let the eye rest for 30 minutes.
Thev’re not just bloodshot eves. I wanted an
effect like the eves in VILLAGE OF THE
DAMNED and its sequel CHILDREN OF
THE DAMNED—I wanted them to be sick
and decayed and, I hate to use the word
but. . .pus-filled. We also added one element
which had not been done before: we put a
reflective material in the contact, and when
we turn our lights on it, they glow back at us.
That wav we didn’t have to do bum-ins, w'e
didn’t have to do opticals, all of which you
never have the amount of time to do thor¬
oughly. I looked at VILLAGE OF THE
DAMNED three weeks ago w'hen it plaved
here, and I realized how' seldom their eyes
really glow in the picture. For us, when
there’s a vampire, his eyes are shining, and
that is important. Another thing was that we
didn’t fly our vampires in on wires, because
even in the best of films you can see them.

In THE EXORCIST you can

Yes, exactly. We wanted a method where¬
by we could actually fly a person in through a
window. So we took a normal crane, like a
Titan crane, and we put a long pole at the end
of it, and we put the actor in a body harness at
the end of that, so we were able to shove him
into a room, and at the same time control his
body movements. He could fly in, he could
straighten up, he could tilt to one side, as long
as the pole was not visible in the shot. We
wanted to get a feeling of floating. And the
effect is horrific, because you know there’s no
wires; we’re shooting the whole window
including the sill and wall above it. It was also
something we were very nervous about,
because you haven’t got the lime, in a
television show', to make a special effects
mistake; it had better work. We also did
something else—we shot the whole thing in
reverse, and are projecting it forward, in the
levitation and floatation scenes, because we
want the smoke to be behind the vampires.
That way we have more control over it. I think
it turned out better than w'e had even hoped
for—it has a very spooky, eerie quality to it.
And the key, again, is getting a visual director,
because if you read the script, you’ll see
there’s not much dialogue. That’s not to sav
there aren’t those expository scenes, those
getting acquainted scenes—but for a four-
hour movie of the week, it is what you’d call
“light on dialogue.” And that’s all the more
reason why it’s got to be visually strong.

Ronnie Scribner as Ralphie Click Instating into brother
Danny’s bedroom on the eve of his own funeral, a
sequence made all the more chilling via the use of
ingenious special effects: no wires. Above, Scribner is
shown preparing for the scene, getting a touch-up job on
his death-like makeup, as director Tobe Hooper and
producer Richard Kobritz look on. The fleece on the boy’s
chest is the lining of a corset-like harness over which he
wears normal pajamas. The harness is on the end of a
long, black-draped arm which is controllable for pitch.
The arm itself is attached to a Chapman Apollo Crane,
very common on movie sets, which is masked from view by
a black backing. The crane provides the whole apparatus
with foru'ard or backward movement, while the arm
provides yaw capabilities, panning left or right, as well as
housing pipes necessary to deliver the desired fog effects.

“My problem is obviously going to
be‘Standards and Practices’—what
they’re going to allow us to show
and what they’re not. The script
went by them. They approved it
But I know they’re going to come
back and say they want a horror
film but they don’t want to scare
people either. I just don’t want to
start cutting out the horror. . .why
make the damned thing in the first
place?”

Richard Kobritz, Producer

Are you shooting a hard and a soft version, to
accomodate the foreign theatrical release?

Not in terms of nudity or anything like
that, but in terms of intensity.

You mean, in the 7V version, a stake will be
driven through a vampire's heart and go out of
camera range, while in the European theatrical, the
audience will see the blood and —

Exactly. We’re protecting ourselves. It’s a
different market out there, one where you
have to pay, not where you see it for free. But
in a horror picture done primarily for tele¬
vision, you’ve got to deal in scares instead of
blood, which is what we’re try ing to do. What
we want is to have the bogeyman jump out of
the closet at the audience every few minutes.
If it works, we’re successful. If we’re not
successful. . .we’re not successful. And that’s
the hard part—trying to find someone who
can pull that off I’ve been lucky. In Carpen¬
ter’s case, he’s a guy we’ll come to recognize,
not just because of the success of HALLOW¬
EEN, but in the next few years through
universal recognition, as a major talent. And
the same is true of Tobe. Because I happened
to like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSA¬
CRE, which I think is brilliant. I saw' it a few
times—and I know they did it for $100,000
in 20 davs with a student crew, and all those
things that don’t help to make a picture
good—and still there was an incredible visual
quality. What was hinted at and never seen
really intrigued me.

There isn’t that much outright blood and gore in
TEXAS CHAINSA W. You just think you see it.

Exactly. There are some beautiful touches.
Mv God, I saw the way the camera was
moving, the way the exterior of the house was
established, things you don’t normally see in
big features, let alone television.

Dollying m under the swing after the girl as she
enters the house. . .

Right—that scene in particular. I couldn’t
believe how well that film had been made,
especially under those conditions. But once I
saw it, I had my director.

How did you find Hooper? After losing his
Universal contract, and the fiasco with THE DARK,
he just disappeared.

I didn’t know anything about a Universal
contract or any of that. I heard about that
later. For me, I find the best way to operate is
to find the project first and then the director.
I just ran a lot of films, some of them by
people who were very well hyped. Some w'ere
okav, some were really terrible, and there
were just none that compared to TEXAS
CHAINSAW. I hadn’t seen it before, when it
came out. It was just a title I knew of—it’s
obviously a very memorable title. I knew it

had made some money. I had heard Billy
Friedkin had liked it and had recommended
Hooper, that he’d worked on a few subse¬
quent projects, some of which were aborted
— one, EATEN ALIVE, was made. That I
never did see. But once I saw TEXAS CHAIN¬
SAW, my mind was made up. I didn’t even
know w hether Tobe lived here. We found he
had an agent, and w'e called him up. Obviously
I had to have a meeting with Tobe, to tell him
how I worked, which was probably totally
different than anything he’d been exposed
to—even at a major studio, even at Universal.

I said I work very closely. It’s essentially my
decision what the final script is. Not to say
vour voice won’t be heard, but—

But you're the boss.

Right, and this is what l want to make.
Last year I did this kind of picture, this year
I’m doing this kind of picture. They’re in the
same genre, but it’s a dissimilar subject
matter. I like a very fluid camera, 1 want
incredible visual style on the picture and I
also w'ant to make sure it is cast impeccably
well. We naturally have to deal with some
television names to satisfy the network, but I
reallv want to make sure it’s a classy act we’re
putting together.

That’s an unusual list. I would neirr expect a TV
producer to say he wants a fluid camera, he doesn’t
want zoom lenses. Was Hooper impressed?

I don’t know'. Well, yeah —I think any¬
body who hears that is very surprised. I know
I can keep a pace going and there’s certain
things I can change or modify as we go along.
But I care that the thing ends up looking like a
feature, that it just is not something that looks
like every other television movie with a
modern jazz score behind it. Then again, it’s
a subject matter that I’ve always liked and
want to see dramatized well. I’m not into
that, I don’t collect stills or anything, I just
feel I want to make an interesting horror
movie—one with class, with believabilitv.
After I met Tobe, I decided he was the man to
direct SALEM’S LOT. So I went to the
network, they said okay—I don’t mean they
were overly enthusiastic. They didn’t even
know who a Tobe Hooper was—and I just
said, “Don’t worry.”

Was any other director ei er considered?

No. There were a lot of directors that
wanted to be considered, but weren’t. The
book was originally purchased by our feature
department, which then had several screen-
plavs done on it—and this is going back a few
vears ago—and not one of the screenplays
worked. The president of our TV division
thought if we could sell it to a network as a
four-hour, we might put out another screen-
plav with a brand-new writer and see if we
could lick the problem. We got Paul Monash
and structured some things very much dif¬
ferent than the book and totally different
from the previous screenplays—I mean, they
were just bad screenplays. In a crazy way,
SALEM’S LOT works better in a longer
version than in a normal, theatrical version.

Not much happens in the book for the first half,
and then everything explodes.

Also, the more you read of Stephen
King—I’m like you. I’ve read most of his
stuff—he’s damn hard to translate to the
screen.

The characters all think to themselves. . .

And all those internal monologues that
give you goose-flesh while you’re sitting

alone reading are a real problem to deal with
cinematicallv. So we had to work on that.

/ heard someuhere that George Romero was
considered to direct.

Well, I always liked NIGHT OF THE
LIVING DEAD and his name was one that
I’d thought of. But I never contacted him
because I’ve got all the problems of, will he
come out here, can I convince the network
w hen a man only makes pictures in Pittsburgh:*
It was easier with Tobe. But more important,

I just liked TEXAS CHAINSAW better. It’s a
film that has gone, I think, beyond a cult
status, which it always had.

In theatrical features today, it’s probably safe to
say no holds are barred in explicit horror. Since, on
TV, you can’t show that, and even if you could, you’d
panic the average home viewer, can SALEM'S LOT
satisfy both the horror buff and the mainstream
audience?

I think we can. It is really superbly cast.
Even in the supporting roles, we always went
for actors instead of stars. We have in Ed
Flanders—who plays Bill Norton, the doctor
—a man who just got an Emmy nomination
for TRUMAN AT POTTSDAM. We wanted
complete credibility, complete believabilitv.
That to me was the real horror, a nice little
town that’s slowly being eaten alive by vam¬
pires and all of a sudden wakes up to that
realization. We had to get actors of a calibre
that could give us the credibility, not just nice
TV names who are limited in their acting
ability. That’s Number One. Number Two is
playing Barlow’ the wav we did. He’s not in
competition with Frank Langella, not in
competition with Bela Lugosi—it’s back to
German Expressionism in the final analysis.

And it’ll be the first time most people will have
seen that, anyway.

Right! And again, trying to give it believa-
bilitv by not having him talk. He’s a monster,
a fiend. And one last point, to me—and I’ve
heard this before and never quite believed it,
but now I do—you’re frightened more by
what you don’t see than by what you do.

The credo of the Val Lew ton films of the
! 9AO's. . .

That’s it exactly. There’s that off-screen
noise. . .and you don’t have to see a person’s
neck ripped open, just that quick cut of the
vampire or whatever, a hand coming into
frame, is more frightening. HALLOWEEN
was the best horror film I’ve seen in the last
five to seven years in that respect, because
you were jumping out of your seat every two
minutes, and every scene was manipulated—
but it was a valid scare. And that, to me, was
important. You really weren’t seeing a blood¬
bath up there. It was almost like seeing a 3-D
movie, because things were jumping out of
the screen at you. In a way, I think that’s what
any good horror film tries to do.

Specifically, whose idea was the NOSFERA TU
look— yours. Hooper’s, the make-up man?

Mine. We brought the concept to the
make-up artist, and he made a few sketches.
We’d sav, “No, we want the eyes darker’’. . .
and it was hit and miss, trial and error. It went
like that until we had what we wanted. And
early on, I knew who the actor was going to
be. Even back when I w'orked with Paul on
the screenplay. Barlow, once he was deter¬
mined to be ugly, was always going to be this
one actor in my mind, if he was living ii? the
United Slates.

Reggie Nalder— had you seen him in MA RK OE

20

THE DEVIL?

No, I remembered him from Hitch¬
cock’s film THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO
MUCH, the remake, and I thought he had a
really unattractive face then. He was the one
for me.

Curtis Harrington used him in a TV movie a few
years ago. THE DEAD DON'T DIE (1974).

Really? He* obviously works sporadically
because of his face, unfortunately. But I knew
that if the man was in town and available, that
was my Barlow. Nobody else was considered
or even discussed.

So you telescoped the book a great deal —
trimmed dialogue, combined characters. . .

Only because there was no way of doing
everybody in the town, especially when their
fate was relatively the same. It’s a small town
of 2,000 people and we tried to concentrate
on the doctor in the town, the sheriff in the
town, the children in the town, and some
other peripheral characters—a representative
cross-section. But where possible—except in
the case of what wouldn’t translate cinemati-
callv or was just too long—we are very faithful
to the book.

Everybody Eve spoken to on 5.4 LEM'S LOT says
CBS wants the moi'ie on in November. Can you do
that7

I know* they’d love to put it on during
their November ratings sweep, and I think
it’s a good piece of material for a sw eep week.
But I also know that in this sort of movie, a
good, atmospheric, old-fashioned, Bernie
Herrmann type score is essential, and w'e’ve
got to get that done yet.

Do you think one reason CBS might be anxious to
get it on in November is they don't want a vampire
movie on after 19 79, that the crest will have passed?

No, I don’t think that’s it at all. This craze
is going to go far beyond the end of this year.
Especially when you’ve got so many impor¬
tant movies coming out, in particular Ku¬
brick’s THE SHINING—another Stephen
King novel which I’ve got to believe is going
to be a masterpiece that’s going to lead all of
them. I would think that’s going to carry the
genre even further in success and longevity'.

Are you concerned about TV censorship of
SALEM'S LOT?

Well, my problem is obviously going to
be Standards and Practices—what they’re
going to allow us to show' and what they’re
not. The script went by them. They approved
it. But I know’ they’re going to come back and
say they want a horror film but they don’t
want to scare people either. I have no doubt
that’s going to be the battle. I wouldn’t mind
a disclaimer at the beginning, “Viewer Dis¬
cretion Advised”—if anything, that usually
lifts the rating points up. I just don’t want to
stan cutting out the horror of the picture. To
make a horror picture and then start cutting
out the horror. . .why make the damned
thing in the first place? □

Top: Barlow (Regie Nalder) holds Mark Petrie (Lance
Kerwin) in his grip in the sequence where he kills Mark's
parents and confronts Father Callahan. Producer Richard
Kobritz chose to go back to the look of F. \V. Mumau’s
.XOSEEMTV for the concept of Barlow because he
wanted the vampire in SALEM *S LOT to be the essence of
einl, in fact as well as in appearance. Bottom: James
Mason studies the SALEM'S LOT script in his dressing
room between scenes, with his wife Clarissa Kaye, who
plays Marjorie (Hick, one o) the vampires seen in the film.
Mason plays Straker, Barlow’s servant and acolyte.

Will CLASH OF THE TITANS
be the film to take Rav Harrvhau-
sen’s Dvnamation process from cult
following to mass audience accept¬
ance? Budgeted at $10 million and
boasting an all-star cast including
Lord Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom
Maggie Smith, etc. [see 8:4:31), pro¬
ducer Charles H. Schneer ought to
be justified in his optimism. Little
word has leaked from the produc¬
tion apart from some carefully word¬
ed press releases and some prestige
publicity shots by Lord Snowden
showcased in one British tabloid.
The Daily Mail, and a glossy wom¬
an’s weekly. The fusion therefore,
of talented actors, an able director
(Desmond Davis, renowned for his
romantic films), a strong screenplay
adapted from Greek mythology, and
Ray Harryhausen’s award-winning
Dvnamation stop-motion animation
technique, could, and should, work.
The effects will be integrated into the
film, not just set pieces holding to¬
gether a flimsy foundation, which has

“How do you
get an actor to
react without
feeling foolish,
when you ask
them to stand
there and get
strangled by
something that
isn’t there?”

Desmond Davis

Facing Page: Titani of the
effects field Charles H. Schneer
(scaled) and Ray Harry hausen
on location. Inset Director
Desmond Dains with .Maggie
Smith and Vrsula Andress
(right) on ML Olympus. This
Page: Filming Ham Hamlin
as Perseus, on his quesL
crossing the River Styx.

Interviews by
Mike Childs
and Alan Jones

so often been the case in the past.

The story, echoing Schneer and
Hamhausen’s previous film JASON
AND THE ARGONAUTS (1962).
tells of attempts by Perseus (Harry
Hamlin) to win the hand of Androm¬
eda (Judi Bowker). Hamlin, an Amer¬
ican actor, was last featured in Stan¬
ley Donen’s MOVIE MOVIE (1979),
and plaved the lead in the TV mini¬
series STUDS LON1GAN; Bowker
has been seen recently in BBC-TVs
production of COUNT DRACULA,
starring Louis Jourdan. The gods
Zeus (Laurence Olivier) and his wife
Hera (Claire Bloom), along with
Thetis, god of the sea (Maggie Smith),
Aphrodite (Ursula Andress), plus
sundry’ others played by Burgess
Meredith, Susan Fleetwood and Tim
Piggot-Smith, look down at Perseus
from their lofty perch on Mount
Olympus and decide, according to
whim, whether to help or hinder him
in his pursuit. Perseus is aided in his
task by Pegasus, the winged horse,
and Bubo, the owl, to overcome the

three Stygian witches, who share one
eve between them, the two-headed
wolf/dog Dioskilos. Medusa, thegor-
gon. and Kraken, the primeval sea
monster.

It was in the last weeks of shoot¬
ing the live action sequences that we
visited the sets of CLASH OF THE
TITANS at Pinewood Studios. The
production was in the process of
filming a scene where Andromeda’s
spirit form is being manipulated bv
the evil Calibos. which ultimately
ends with a Harrvhausen vulture
earning her off in a gilded cage.
While the set of Andromeda’s bed¬
room was being draped in black
velvet for double-exposures to be
supered-in later, we spoke to direc¬
tor Desmond Davis. CLASH OF
THE TITANS is his debut in the
fantasv genre. Bom in London in
1927, Davis began his career in films
as a clapper boy. and during World
War II served with the Army Film
Unit. As a camera operator his cred¬
its include A TASTE OF HONEY.

pieces which one has obviously ad¬
mired. by people like Rav and many
others in the effects field. But I have
never been impressed with the
standard of acting these films usually
contain, and as often as not they
haven’t been very well cast.

Would you say more of the budget has
gone to the stars rather than the effects*

For this film, the budget was
stratified into an over the line budg¬
et and an under the line budget. The
under the line budget, which includ¬
ed all the special effects, remained
untouched. MGM increased the over
the line budget to accomodate some
of our artists, so nothing has been
sacrificed for the sake of star names.

Hou answerable to MGM are you?

I suppose the director is eter-
nallv exposed and answerable to
Metro, but we had had long meetings
before the film began. I went to
America to cast the male lead and
met them there.

Why was Harry Hamlin chosen and
when did you start on the film?

ances. will only enhance the effects
and make them all the more believ¬
able. At first, I found it hard to direct
the film on behalf of the actors. How
do you get an actor to react without
feeling foolish, when you ask them to
stand there and get strangled by
something that isn’t there? I worked
with them a lot to overcome their
natural—shall we say—embarrass¬
ment about fighting nothing. The
whole thing becomes very bizarre,
photographing them with six-foot
hardboard cut-outs. You just have to
work hard to make that son of thing
seem possible. If you take on a pic¬
ture like this, it does make certain
limitations. Some scenes just can’t be
done a different way because of the
extensive pre-planning and the fact
that the camera has to be locked-off
in certain positions. It is frustrating
at times, when the camera set-up
sometimes isn’t the one that you
would ultimately choose. I always
rehearse on the set and sometimes
before, if its a major sequence. By its

Charles H.
Schneer, Ray
Harryhausen,
and director
Desmond
Davis, talk
about filming
the latest
Harryhausen
effects tour
de force, the
Greek myth of
“Perseus and
the Gorgon's
Head," with
a big budget,
all-star cast.

THE LONELINESS OF A LONG
DISTANCE RUNNER and TOM
JONES. In 1962, he directed his first
feature. THE GIRL WITH THE
GREEN EYES, following this with I
WAS HAPPY HERE. THE UNCLE,
SMASHING TIME and A NICE
GIRL LIKE ME. His most recent
credit was the British television ver¬
sion of William Shakespeare’s “Mea¬
sure for Measure.’’

Isn 't this a strange film for you to be
directing? After alL you've never done a
fantasy film before.

Yes, this is a different film for me.
but I do see it as a mixture of myth
and fairy story, like the sleeping
princess scene we are shooting now.
I’ve always done more romantic
films and I see my role in this film as
presenting first class characteriza¬
tion. I won’t be stressing the roman¬
tic element so much as making it
complement the special effects. The
films of this genre, in the past, if I may
review’ them, have relied solely on set

I started on the film in January
[1979) and cast it then. I hadn’t seen
Ham’ in MOVIE MOVIE; I had just
met him. We saw about 300 young
American actors in New York and
Los Angeles, and I was very unim¬
pressed by most of them. You know,
they were all archetypal ‘spacemen’
and Starskv and Hutch-type cops.
Fair enough, though. That’s what
most of the work is for them at the
moment. But I chose Ham because
he was an actor from a classical
background.

Why do you think you were chosen as
director by Schneer and Harryhausen*

One of the reasons why I was
chosen for the film is my technical
background. It proved, I think, that I
could work with Ray very closely and
not become totally baffled by all the
double and tripie exposures, the
mattes and blue screen work and
puppet animation. With Ray and I
working together, it means that the
real characters, which I believe I
have brought out in the perform¬

verv nature, the film has few long
dialogue sequences, but I always run
through it and try not to go beyond
the third take, as I don’t want to lose
that freshness.

Why was the title changed from PER¬
SEUS AND THE GORGON’S HEAD*

Oddlv enough. I’d never heard
that title before until you mentioned
it just now. I wanted it to be simply
TITANS, but MGM’s market re¬
search team found that the general
public would think it was a film
about business executives. MGM
thought that the more vulgar title
would be more than compensated
bv the cast list. I’ve pondered the fan
that the film might appear dated
when it finally opens, what with all
the science fmion film competition
around, but these films do seem to
have a great deal of staying power.
Columbia re-releases all the old
Harryhausen’s year after year, and
they still seem to make money. #

Davis will finish an assembly

22

“There are not many
picture makers in the
English-speaking world
who have devoted their
time and attention to story
material set in Greek
mythology. We did that
once before in JASON
AND THE ARGONAUTS,
and now, seventeen years
later, we are doing it
again in CLASH OF THE
TITANS.”

Charles Schneer

rough cut which will then be passed
on to Rav Harryhausen. The release
date being talked about at the mo¬
ment is Summer 19HI for the United
States, and a little earlier, around
Easter, for Great Britain. Kev situa¬
tions will play the feature in 70mm
and Dolby stereo.

The reason CLASH OF THE
TITANS is being made for MGM and
not Columbia, with whom Schneer
and Hamhausen still contractually
have four films to complete, is quite
simple: they were waiting for a de¬
cision on the film while the David
Begelman scandal was at its peak.
Meanwhile. MGM stepped in and
made them an offer w hich they even-
tuallv did not refuse. Charles H.
Schneer denies any implication now
that the film’s budget is more than
they would have had at Columbia.

"Whether for Columbia or Met¬
ro,” says Schneer. "it costs what it
costs. Costs today are not what they
were five vears ago. or even two years
ago. It is a very expensive picture
because of the demands of travel and
set construction, which you’ve seen
here today.” Schneer refers to the
ultili/ation of the "Bond” stage, the
largest sound stage in the world,
where the interior of the Temple of
Thetis, the palace of Cassiopea,
Mount Olympus and the set for the
flooding of Argos have all been built.
"This has taken us nine months to
put together,” he continues, "and
that’s why we’re at Pinewood for
twelve weeks—to give us a chance to
tear down the sets we shot in the first
month and build the sets for the last
month."

Did any acton turn you down for the
pictureT

Everybody we wanted for the film
we got without exception. Half a
dozen years ago, stars would have
thought twice about competing with
Gorgons. Medusas and Krakens, but
we’re living in a world of splendid
visual effects pictures that have cap¬
tured the imagination of the movie¬
going world. The actors realize it*s
the story that counts. It was never a
case of, if they couldn’t do it, the
picture wouldn’t have been made. A

Rif hi: The three Stygian witches, all blind but
for the tingle eye they thare between them (Right
Inset), left Inset . Soldiers are frozen in their
tracks inside the Medusa’s lair, turned to stone
by a glance from this mythological creature, one
of Ray Hamhausen't stop-motion effects yet to
be filmed Release is set for Summer 1981.

24

V'

• *.

“Most of the effects in
CLASH OF THE TITANS
are an integral part of the
story. They’re not just
thrown in for the sake of
it. It is a criticism leveled
at our films, but I think
most of our pictures lend
themselves to this kind
of integration.”

Ray Harry hausen

lot of pictures do happen that way, of
course, but they bought the story, the
ingredients, the magic of what we can
put into it, and all these famous stars
fell into place—may I say they jump¬
ed at it with alacrity! —and nobody in
this picture was paid two or three
million dollars, if you get my mean¬
ing.

Why have you returned to the Greek
legends* It seems like a throwback to
JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.

The story is a natural develop¬
ment from JASON. There are many
Greek legends—this is a different
Greek legend. It so happens that
there are not many picture makers in
the English-speaking world who have
devoted their time and attention to
story material set in this mythology.
We happen to have done that once
and now, seventeen years later, we
are doing it again. We changed the
title because the word Perseus has
some kind of strange connotation in
the American market. It’s one of
those indefinable reactions—I think
few people are born today that are
named Fanny, which was a very* pop¬
ular name in Victorian times. 1 don’t
think we would call any hero today,
American, English. German, Italian,
anv boy, Perseus. We needed a title
that didn’t rely on that name. CLASH
OF THE TI+ANS is an interesting
combination of words that causes a
great deal of intrigue.

Is there more stop-motion animation in
this film ?

Certainly as much. After all, every
picture goes about 120 minutes, and
we have a Dvnamation sequence in
every’ reel, so you’ll end up seeing at

least ten or twelve sequences where
thev’ll be used. Ray and I take a long
time to develop a project, and when
we go into the market place with it,
we have it enormously well re¬
searched, very well designed, su¬
perbly costed—which is a major
factor—and with a blue ribbon tied
around it. The distributor has very'
little to say to us once we bring it to
them. They either want it or they
don’t want it. We find, fortunately,
that we have more than a sufficient
number of takers for the kind of films
we have made. We’re happy to say
that our track record is very, very
unusual, and it is the first time Rav
and ! have combined world-famous
stars and, now after twenty’ years, a
world-famous process.

Do you feel that CLASH OF THE
TITANS will appeal only to your cult
following?

Well, I can tell you Olivier has
cull followers; so does Maggie Smith
— they all have their own attraction to
various audiences—but I think that
this is the first marriage of major
dramatic talents with major special
effects. The consequences of that
marriage are yet to be determined as
to how acceptable it will be. We think
it has all the powerful ingredients
that any picture could have. All it
lacks is a dog and a baby. Every thing
else is in it.

Why did you choose Desmond Davis?

He has a great facility’ for hand¬
ling people. I saw a picture of his a
number of years ago called THE
GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES. I
remember it very well because, at the
time, I said he should direct a picture
for us, but we had nothing for him at
that time. When we came to this
picture, I was given his name bv his
agent. So I said that’s the fellow we’d
like to have direct if the material
appeals to him, and it turned out that
it did. He’s done a super job.

FIRST MEN IN THE MOON has
been your only film in Panaviston. Years
ago. that caused complications. Has this
changed* Is there room in your films for
recent innovations in the effects field*

Oh! There’s room alright, but it
presents optical complications to
stop-motion photography that, in
all honesty, Ray doesn’t really want

to cope with [CLASH OF THE TI¬
TANS is being filmed flat). I remem¬
ber many, many years ago, when we
first started in this business, Rav
telling me he was fearful of moving
from black and white to color. I had
to push him into it at that timeand he
was very' upset with me for goading
him on. I was not as sensitive to these
problems as he obviously was. I ex¬
plained to him that the future of the
business w’as in color, and that he had
to get used to it. He then said that I’d
better put a bed alongside the cam¬
era because he’d have to shoot all
night long to finish the sequences
before the temperature changed
from day to night. He’s been sleep¬
ing a long time now with his bed next
to the camera!

Is your next project going to be SIN-
BAD GOES TO MARS*

We always have projects in mind.
We talk about these things for a few
years and then finally it germinates.
We do have a story— some of it we
like and we’re still working on it.
Columbia is after us every four weeks
as to what it is.

Your long partnership with Ray is
almost unique in the motion picture busi¬
ness. To what do you attribute your success
together*

Two things. First of all. we have
enormous respect for one another.
Secondly, we’re diametrically op¬
posed on everything and we agree
about very’ little. The one arrange¬
ment we have between us is that we
have to agree to agree sometimes,
because if we continue to disagree,
nothing ever happens. So we have the
right of veto over each other and that
formula works very’ well for us. It’s
often said that familiarity breeds con¬
tempt, but in our case we live exactly
two doors away from each other and
have done for twenty’ years. I would
sav that those two doors have made
‘‘absence make the heart grow fond¬
er.” We have a unique arrangement.
Our interests outside the movie in¬
dustry' are widely diverse. I can’t
think of any area outside of our
mutual respect for each other on
which we totally agree and that, I
think, has kept us together for this
length of time. We don’t infringe on
each other’s specific areas, and on

that basis we’ve got along very well,
and I see no end in sight to that
relationship as far as our professional
careers are concerned.

Why do you think Ray is still the major
force in the animation field today?

He has a unique talent which the
motion picture industry' has vet to
fully recognize. He is a major talent
in a major field, but being away from
the establishment, which is Cali¬
fornia, although he’s a native-born
Californian, he is not part of that
establishment, although he has been
recognized for what he has done and
his books w’idely read. His comments
are widely noted and his position is
firmlv established among people in
that field or trying to arrive at a
position in that field—Jim Danforth
is twenty years younger than Ray.
There is nowhere you can go in the
cult field or the professional area that
does not know his work—work that is
highly regarded. There are major
cameramen throughout the world
who have written to us and called us
to talk about shots. There is no higher
tribute you can pay to a man who has
three Oscars for photography (sic)
when you get that sort of response.

Does it get harder to think of neu> ways
to introduce the effects?

One of mv jobs is to remind Ray
during story' meetings whether he’s
used ideas before in a picture. I’ve
got a long memory in that respect—
he thinks he’ll pull a fast one. I refuse
to repeat ourselves. He can write in
his book that there’s nothing new'
under the sun, but if I’ve seen a
picture w’ith any similarities, out it
goes. It’s not a conscious thing on his
pan. He has usually just forgotten. I
will josh him about it, it’s all good
fun, but I insist we think of some¬
thing else. I’ll say ‘how’ about this.’
He’ll sav he can’t and that means I
know he can. I’ll tell him to figure it
out and, sure enough, two or three
davs later he’ll come back with it all
worked out. This is how our partner¬
ship works—it’s very’ productive for
both of us.

How do you feel about the amount of
time it takes to complete your pictures?

It’s exhausting. Sometimes you
can’t see the forest for the trees. Very
often, if a picture is in the editing

IJl Burgess Milt in Olympian garb, an location with director Demand Davis. Kight. lard laurence Olivier as Tory Charles II Schneer. and Ray llarryhausen relax on the set

stages, I won’t see it for six months,
and then see it with something fresh
to contribute. I generally remember
every shot and frame and see all the
rushes more than anybody else. I see
them three times to most people’s
once, and with very few exceptions, I
don’t forget anything. Although I’ll
tell you this: if I see one of our films
on television, from fifteen or even
five years ago. I won’t remember it. I
have to look to see if it’s one of ours.
Once it’s off the line, that’s it. I
wouldn't be able to tell you the next
shot unless it’s really spectacular. Rav
can. He's got a videocassette ma¬
chine so he can run his old pictures.

We know one of your favorite se¬
quences in any of your films u the skeleton
fight in THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF
SIXBAD, mainly because of Bernard
Herrmann's music. Do you have a com¬
poser m mind for CLASH OE THE
TITANS’

When we start our pictures we
generally feel that our composer
hasn’t been born yet! By the time we
get to that stage, two years have
usually passed. I don’t really like to
think about it until I can say to the
composer, “Here’s the movie.’’ It’s
got to fit. Music is a most integral pan
of our whole visual presentation.
Obviously, we would like someone of
the calibre of John Williams, but we
don’t know what his availability will
be—we haven’t spoken to him yet,
but when we’re ready, and if he’s
available, we’d hope that he’d be
interested. He is a man who certainly
has a proven record for great con¬
temporary music for this panicular
genre, which is what we need.

What do you find interesting about
screenwriter Beverley Cross' work’

We make a classic kind of movie
on a classic theme, and he is Oxford-
trained, speaks Greek and is steeped
in Greek legend. He wrote JASON
AND THE ARGONAUTS as well,
and rather than look up an Oxford
Classical dictionary’, all I had to do
was turn his pages to know I’ve got a
fellow who knows what he’s talking
about. Also, he’s a super dramatist,
and he’ll figure out ways to make the
story’ work. Of course, he’s worked
with me for twenty years. He also
worked on HALF A SIXPENCE with
me. I’m a great admirer of his edu¬
cation and his ability’ to w’ork with us.
Incidentally, he is not the reason
Maggie Smith is playing Thetis [they
are married). She doesn’t need him;
she’s not looking for work!

We spoke to Ray Hanyhausen in
his double-locked workroom in the
Pinewood special effects complex.
Working again in his usual veil of
secrecy’, the only indications of his
work on the film were the xeroxed
storyboards, oil painted production
illustrations of major scenes, like the
flooding of Argos and the emergence
of Kraken from the sea bed. The
latter scene, incidentally, is one simi¬
lar to the Neptune sequence in
JASON. The only model in evidence
was a beautifully-crafted one of
Pegasus, the winged horse, which is
to be used for longshots. Other
models are still in the process of
being made. Harrvhausen is well
know’n for not wishing to discuss his
work in detail, particularly in the

Recreating the iplendor of a great city in the ancient world an example of Harry hausen'% SlO million budget at u>ork.

formative stages of a film’s pro¬
duction. Nevertheless, he was more
than willing to talk generally about
CLASH OF THE TITANS.

Why were you on the set this morning
for what was a simple super-imposition’

There were a number of scenes
this morning that needed double
exposure. I like to control all of the
film’s special effects.

What does the large budget mean to
you’

It means we have a wider scope.
Apart from the Dvnamation se¬
quences, we also have the flooding of
Argos, which is using a blue screen 75
feet bv 25 feet. Actually though, we
had a larger screen in the last picture,
but this one will be more complex,
involving as it does a number of
people walking in the distance, etc.

How many snakes will the Gorgon’s
head contain’

Twelve, I think. I haven’t count¬
ed them, otherwise I’d be very fright¬
ened about doing it. It has to look like
a complete head of hair. It won’t be
like the tentacles in IT CAME FROM
BENEATH THE SEA. where we had
to skimp. Medusa is a major problem
but it will be overcome. The picture is
full of problems like Pegasus, the
flying horse. Strobing seems to
bother a lot of people for some
reason. I think it’s a fad. It isn’t
important to us at all. It’s never been
a problem that couldn't be solved. At
the moment I’m working on all the
effects myself. We did talk to Jim
Danforth about doing specific things.
He’s come up the hard way, a fan
first. Most drop out when they realise
how much work it is. When we finish
shooting the live action, it will remain
to be seen if I need help.

What other effects do you have planned
to appear in the film’

A scorpion is being animated. It is
being built, as the real thing is far too
small to use in the same wav that we
used the crab in MYSTERIOUS
ISLAND. The Stygian witches are a
large sequence, but that is all live
action and make-up. Bubo, the owl,
is in fact three things. A live one. a
radio-controlled one that flaps it’s
wings and rolls it’s eves and a puppet
one for further characterization. It
makes it easier for me. A motorized
robot is very’ limiting and the anima¬
tion will make it more flexible to the
demands of the script. We cut effects
down in our last picture. Most of the
effects here are an integral pan of the
story. They’re not just thrown in for
the sake of it. It is a criticism levelled
at our films, but I think most of our
pictures lend themselves to this in¬
tegration.

How closely are you working with
Desmond Davis’

Very closely. We discuss every-
problem and find a happy medium.
Once you leave a location you can’t
go back. Mv production drawings are
very’ imponant. Everybody seems to
think we have excess money on this
film. We’ve always been in the posi¬
tion of getting spectacular effects for
far less than other companies would
have done. Sometimes that’s not al¬
ways appreciated. Just because you
spend a lot of money doesn’t mean to
sav the effects will be better.

Are you utilizing any of the newer
techniques in the field’

There’s been very- little technical
advance in my department. Some of
our more shaky matte lines have to
be blamed on Eastman Kodak. You
are not always blessed with accurate

sprocket holes, but we do the best we
can.

Do you think the major stars cast in the
film util legitimize Dynamation’

It has always been acceptable, but
I am still undiscovered by the vast
majority of audiences. I run across
people all the time who’ve never seen
my films and when shown them are
very’ intrigued, particularly by the
amount of work involved and our
film’s very’ unusual qualities. People
prefer to see performers they’ know of
in a starring part and that’s what
we’ve attempted to do. I think we
have an excellent cast, all suited to
their roles.

You obviously still like the challenge
these film’s present or you wouldn't still be
doing them’

Yes I do. I don’t think about the
four years in front of me, otherwise I
probably wouldn’t do it. You have to
take an attitude about the impor¬
tance of the characters in the film.
Some of my stop motion characters
have plaved verv important pans.

What about SI NBA D GOES TO
MARS’

We were working on both at one
point, but not now. SIN BAD has
been abandoned for the time being,
until wt are well under w-av with this
one. It might be our next project, it
depends. The Space cycle may burn
itself out. It depends on how quicklv
we finish this one, and the money of
course. We would have to go in a
different direction for the creatures
on that project.

What about your book’

They wanted another chapter on
the last SINBAD and this one, but I
think we'll have to stan again and do
a completely new- book. The problem
as always is time. □

27

TIME AFTER TIME
. .accomplishes the
rare, if often attempted,
feat of mixing romance,
comedy and horror."

TIMKA FTF R Tl M F A Warner Bros Release
10/79. 112 minute*. In Panavmon and Tech-
nirolor. An Onon Pirture Pmdured bv Hrrt>
Jaffe Direrted bv Nicholas Mever. Screenpbv
by NirhoU* Meyer from a ttory by Karl
Alexander and Sieve Haye*. Asiociale pn»-
durer. Sieven-Charle* Jaffe. Music. Mikio*
Ro/sa. Director of photography. Paul Loh-
mann. Production designer. Edward C. Car-
fagno Fdiior. Don Cambem. Special effects.
Lam Fuenie*. Jim Blount. Optical effects
design, Richard F. Taylor. Sound. Jerry Jost.
Sound effects editor*. Jay Went and Colin
Waddv. Electronic animation. Image West.
Ud.. Russ Maehl. Sonny King

H. C. Wells.Malcolm McDowell

Stevenson David Warner

Amy .Man Steenburgen

It Mitchell.Charles Cioffi

Assistant.Kent Williams

Mr*. Turner.Andonia Katsaros

Shirley.Patti D’Arhanville

Fdwards .James Garrett

TIME AFTER TIME opens like
the kind of schlock shock movies
that have detailed the sordid adven¬
tures of slash murderers like Jack
the Ripper: an obvious lady of ill
repute wanders drunkenlv out into
a fbggy, deserted street. The point
of view camera watches her for a
while, then with echoing footsetps
strides off towards her. She stops,
re-arranges her dress, as she recog¬
nizes by the “fine clothes” a poten¬
tial customer, accepts a gold coin,
and leads the pointed-out way into
a dark alley-. She asks the name, the
better to personalize the purchased
passion. A voice says, “Mv name is
John” (pun intended), then con¬
tinues with a Bloch-ian “But my
friends call me Jack!” A plunging,
tearing sound, a squirt of blood,
and the lady, eves staring, slides out
of the frame.

But there the resemblance ends;
TIME AFTER TIME is a robust,
splendidly detailed entertainment
that with its superb craftsmanship
accomplishes the rare, if often at¬
tempted. feat of mixing romance,
comedv and horror.

The time is “Late 1893.” and we
cut from the aftermath of murder—

by David Bartholomew

the final view is a grimly effective
shot of the silent, misty street, a
stream of blood working its way out
from the alley—to a high Victorian
dining room and a dinner party
hosted bv none other than H. G.
Wells (Malcolm McDowell). Unlike
the other Ripper movies, which are
designed as mysteries, there is no
doubt in TIME as to the identity of
the culprit, as David Warner soon
enters, late, amid much mention of
his name, John Stevenson, a re¬
spected phvsician. Wells soon heads
his guests into the basement, where
his latest creation, a time machine,
sits rather forlornly, looking like a
squashed-together 60’s Caddy. The
guests scoff, but when the police
arrive and find Stevenson’s bag with
its bloody gloves, the machine is
tested by the Ripper, who arrives,
according to the time indicator, in
San Francisco on Nov. 5th 1979.
Feeling responsible for unleashing
a psvchotic murderer on the future.
Wells follows him to try and bring
him back to justice in his own lime.

Writer and, with this film, first-
time director Nicholas Meyer has
made a healthy living using histori¬
cal and/or other people’s famous
fictional characters in newly created
adventures, chiefly Sherlock Holmes,
whom Mey er has always considered,
along with Watson, as real-life men.
in The 7 Per-Cent Solution and
The West End Horror, two elabo¬
rately accounted-for “resurrected,
unpublished manuscripts” by Wat¬
son which Meyer claims to have
only “edited.” (He alludes to the
importance of Holmes in his career
bv having Wells, when things get
rough in 1979 and he goes to the
police, using Holmes’ name; storv-
wisc, it is a detriment to his own
credibility with the hardened cops).
Unlike in the novels, which function
on the readers supplying a hearsay
historical culture (how accurate it is
makes no difference to the enjoy¬
ment of the stories), the concept of
reality is central to TIME.

Indeed. Meyer gives us two re¬
alities in the film, with the first the
resplendentlv recreated late Victo¬
rian era, designed by Edward C.
Carfagno. For a time, the opening
street set (the weakest of the film)

H. G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell* prepare i to leave as Amy ( Mary Steenburgen > looks on.

reminds us of the single street used
repeatedly throughout the Holmes/
Ripper opus MURDER BY DECREE
(thoroughly undistinguished apart
from the witty’ interplaving of Plum¬
mer and Mason). This time period
is Wells’ physical reality, although
bv temperament and as a budding
futurologist he feels confined and
impatient with it. Wells looks for¬
ward to using his new machine to
travel forward to the future, to dis¬
cover his predicted “utopia.” What
he finds instead is dving-70*s San
Francisco. The city is a curiously
good choice of locale by Mever in
which to place his London-familiar
Ripper, with its green parks, diverse
population and comfortable feeling,
of all the large American cities, of
open spaces. It also has a notorious,
carefully proscribed sleaze area, in
North Beach, as easy for the Ripper
to slide into and out of as his old
Soho haunts.

If all movies, even documen¬
taries, are unreal, offering only a
filmmaker’s interpretation of“real-
ity”, Mever gives us clever and
concise characterization of the cha¬
otic, at times literally absurd quality
of modern life. We watch Wells
fumble for a grasp on it, as he
comes up against automobiles, traf¬
fic lights. Hari Khrishnas, McDon¬
alds, molded plastic tables (“I never
saw wood like this before”), escala¬
tors, and movies. (Wells hides under
his seat through “Exorcist IV," while
Amy (Mary- Steenburgen), the wom¬
an he falls in love with, chides him,
“It’s onlv a movie.). The quality of
life seems summed up best in a shot
of a conflicting pair of newspapers:
a sex tabloid beside a legitimate
newspaper that headline-screams
“Colts Maul Rams.” To a stranger,
especially one from another time, it
is as if even language itself has come
apart.

McDowell’s Wells is not the stur-
dv adventurer of Pal’s THE TIME
MACHINE. He tells his dinner
guests that despite his curiosity, he
will use his invention when he “works
up the nerve." McDowell brings an
immensely effective, lightly slap-
stickv physical grace to his role. Fie
recognizes that until he gets his
bearings in 1979, for survival’s sake
he must imitate the behavior of
others, and in the film’s brightest
come moments, he hails a cab and
orders food at McDonalds. McDo¬
well’s sense of surprise and astonish¬
ment (could his predictions be so
wrong.-*) are wonderfully adroit, like
his discovery at McDonalds (French
fries are pommes frites!**). More
importantly, McDowell also endows
his character with a more serious
shading, bringing out the dilemma
between his love and concern for
Amy and desire to protect her. and
the grim necessity of his task in
capturing the Ripper, his former
friend.

And cutting through the roman¬
tic comedy at various points is the
very grimness of that dangerous
chore, for the Ripper has begun to
murder again. Mever does not shy
awav from the violence of the Rip¬
per’s deeds. Thus. TIME carries a
genuine shock value, at the risk of
offending a general audience, that

adds immensely to the overall film
and grants it genre importance. Its
moods are brilliantly reflected in
another fine score bv Miklos Rozsa
(although his work here is not up to
the exquisitely masterful level of
PROVIDENCE).

The film’s sense of character is
strong. Just before Stevenson’s en¬
trance to the dinner party' in 1893,
Wells had been playfully discussing
his newest cause and prediction:
“free love” and the emergence of
the liberated woman. He comes up
smack against her in 1979 in Amy.

If the unsophisticated Amy, who
has no books in her apartment,
becomes the embodiment of a 70’s
male view of a liberated woman,
particularly in her sexual agression,
as she hungers after the passive
male Wells, she hardly expresses,
or is allowed to express, the rigorous
responsibilities liberation entails.
She tells him, “My work is my life.”
yet the evidence of the film hardly
suggests that. And she’s quite willing
to betray that ethic by returning
with Wells to his time. (Of course, it
also makes a snappy happy ending).

In giving up her life for love, Meyer
rather places her in the guise of
Gothic romance. Despite an intelli¬
gent performance, the film for the
most part uses Amy as mere conven¬
tional love interest.

Most remarkably, Warner adds
a dimension to his role. The Ripper
is a timeless figure of unredeemed
menace and evil, and most films
have treated him as such a stick
figure. But Warner injects the pre¬
cious element of self aw’areness and
inner torment. At the end, he ac¬
cedes to his fate, helping to deter¬
mine it, by hesitating in pushing
the time machine’s control which
allows Wells to pull the crystalline
control pin, without which (in a bit
of fancifully illogical plotting), he
will time-travel uncontrollably to
infinity, without the machine.

Mever has elicited compelling
performances from all. One of the
film’s best moments is its most
subtle and chilling, the scene in
which Stevenson re-enters Amy’s
bank to exchange more gold sover¬
eigns for dollars. In a cross-cut
flickering of eyes, into which know¬
ledge comes like an epiphany. Ste¬
venson realizes that Amy is the one
who has turned Wells onto his trail,
and at the same moment, Amy
realizes that he know's it, and that
she will probably be one of his next
victims.

Somewhat unexpeaedlv, in light
of Wells’ comic floundering in San
Francisco, Mever comes down sur¬
prisingly hard on 70’s life, so much
so that when Amy leaves with him
at the end, we trulv want her to
escape this crazy, grimy life. It is a
curious response, as we’re stuck
here with it except for momentary
escapes into nostalgia. The film’s
first sequence insidiously places us—
a 70’s audience—in the shoes of
absolute, filthy evil. Of course, that
thrill is precisely one reason why we
go to movies, especially violent ones,
to participate in evil’s motives and
forms for entertainmentVsake. In
the film’s first thematic crux, Steven¬
son explains to Wells, as they w'atch

a hold room’s TV montage* of im¬
ages that range from the ridiculous
10 the violent, that in the 70’s he has
found his home: “I am the future.
Here, I am but an amateur." We
have seen him physically acclimate
faster, appearing in sunglasses and
turtleneck and moving with ease
through the city, than Wells, who
doggedly continues to wear his 1893
suit, including spats. Also, Wells’
rides through time (which we also
share in through a point of view-
camera', using star-gate opticals
that at times look like a 60’s rock
concert light show, with an aural
track over the abstract images com¬
posed of mostly negative events in
history, from wars to assassinations
to disasters. (The early sections of
the journey use several of Pal’s
effects: compressing time by show¬
ing the spinning clock hands and
rapidlv rising and setting sun).

Meyer thus posits that violence
is the only stable characteristic of all
of time’s civilizations. The evane¬
scent quality of this theme, implied
in the title, is pounded through in
one complex layered sequence: when
Amy says how much she detests
violence, her statement ties in with
the previous movie violence she
enjoved ("Exorcist IV", as well as
for us. TIME AFTER TIME) as well
as the current real-life series of
murders and lastly to her own pre¬
dined death via the newspaper storv.
(The latter detail adds another nega¬
tive wail to 70’s life: newspapers
don’t always tell the truth).

Despite such intricate stucturing
of the film. Meyer can also resort to
the most dumbly manipulative of
movie tricks, like the various odd
design details of the machine needed
to make the plot w-ork. He also
forces us to watch Amy !>eing chased
through her apartment by Steven¬
son, finally hiding in a closet. A
scene later, we see a severed arm
and a lot of blood. Of course, Amv
turns up alive and well, and we
learn that the victim was her friend
from the bank, invited over for
dinner in a fleeting earlier scene.

Meyer’s second thematic crux
tries, unsuccessfully, to counteract
the pessimism of the film, as Wells
suggests that happiness and love
are the only saving graces of any
civilization. ("All ages are the same.
Only love makes any of them bear¬
able"). The statement, however,
does more to reveal Wells 1893
loneliness than to lighten the film’s
negative portrait of 70’s life. Meyer
has simply piled up too much evi¬
dence to prove the reverse.

As in his novels, which are wryly
footnoted. Meyer is inordinately
clever in his playing with historical
fact. In the museum, he has Wells
musingly eye a sign emblazoned
with th'e title ol the exhibition:
"Wells: a man before his time." He
errs, however, in having Wells pro¬
pounding his theories of utopia in
1893, when he was at the age of 27,
just beginning a career as a journal¬
ist and was living not in Victorian
splendor which the film surrounds
him with but in circumstances just
up from poverty-. (It was only after
the turn of the century that he
lK*came a Fabian socialist and de¬

Thf murderous genie ( Milton Reid) in ARABIAN ADVF.NTVRE. a lackluster retread of THE THIEF OE BAGDAD.

vised his "Utopia" in a trilogy- of
works beginning with Anticipa¬
tions. written in 1901.

The film hints that his 1979 visit
to an unsatisfactory- future may have
been responsible for the deep pes¬
simism and loss of faith in man he
experienced near the end of his life,
reflected in such harrowing. WW
11-influenced books as Mind at the
End of Its Tether, published in
1945, one year before his death.
However, the film’s time of 1893
predates his period of intense opti¬
mism and belief in man, society-
arid the future, which he convened
to film for Alexander Korda in the
famous THINGS TO COME. It is
unlikely that given his 1893 visit to
1979 he could ever have become an
optimist about man’s potential.

However, Amy’s return in the
time machine fits neatly with Wells’
marrying Amy Catherine Robbins
(his second wife) in 1894. Mever
muses that his expressed decision
never again to use the apparatus
perhaps saves him from being
known historically as an inventor
rather than as a w riter. (History savs
it never worked. Although the ma¬
chine needs no "ignition" kev, it is
surprising that no one at the museum
or in the previous years didn’t climb
into it, if only out of curiosity, and
fiddle with the dials and levers,
which spring the the machine in-
stantly to life in the museum).

He tells Amy near the end of
their adventure that he hopes his
future writing will be novel. (He
could have ascertained that bv
glancing through the museum ex¬
hibit). Indeed, they- were; in an
amazing fecundity of thought and
spirit. Wells produced, among oth¬
ers, The Island of Dr. Moreau
(1896), The Invisible Man (1897),
The War of the Worlds (1898),
The First Men In the Moon (1901),
and The Food of the Gods (1904).
And, of course his first one. The
Time Machine, published in 1895.
Mever teases us with the thought
that it could have been a scientific
tract, the proof of a theory, and not
a scientific fiction. □

ARABIAN
ADVENTURE
. .just another routine
kiddie matinee feature.”

ARABIAN ADVENTt'RE An A»ww uiint Film
Distributors Rrlr.iv 11/79. In Color jnd Dol¬
by Strrro Produrrd hv John Dark. Dirrrtrd
by Krvm Connor. SrrrrnpUy. Brian Havlrs.
Director of photography. Alan Humr Pro¬
duction designer, Elliot Scott. Special effects
supervisor. Ceorge Gibbs. Matte effects. Cliff
Cullev. Process projection. Charles Staffed.
Chief make-up. Robin Grantham Editor.
Barry Peters Scenic artist, Ernest Smith.

Alquaxar Christopher Lee

Khasim Milo O Shea

Prince Hasan Oliver Tobias

Majeed Puneet Sira

Bahloul.John Wyman

Flying carpets, fire breathing
monsters, a murderous genie, an
evil wizard, an enchanted island
and a magic mirror fail to save
ARABIAN ADVENTURE from be¬
ing just another routine kiddie mat¬
inee feature. Producer John Dark
and director Kevin Connor (WAR¬
LORDS OE ATLANTIS), perhaps
influenced bv the success of the Rav
Harryhausen epics, have decided
to give the Arabian Nights a turn in
a thinly veiled version of THE
THIEF OE BAGDAD Unfortun¬
ately. the time worn plot doesn’t
have the spectacular special effects
which generally enhance the Harry¬
hausen films.

Hasan, a prince from far off
Bagdad, visits the city of Jadur,
ruled by- the tyrannical wizard. Al-
quazar (Christopher Lee). His arri¬
val coincides with a half hearted
rebellion which is qujckly subdued
by- a magical whirlwind. Alquazar
learns from his magic mirror, actu¬
ally his own good self imprisoned
in a reflecting rock, that Hasan can
be used to secure the enchanted
Rose of Elil, which will make him
the most powerful wizard in the
world. Hasan meets the beautiful
princess Zuleira, the wizard’s step
daughter, and falls in love. Alquazar
has the prince taken prisoner and
strikes a bargain with the young
man. He promises Hasan the hand

by Dan R. Scapperotti

of the princess in marriage if he can
bring back the enchanted rose. Has¬
an agrees and, accompanied bv
Alquazar’s spv Khasim, sets off on
his quest.

Christopher Lee, once again on
the side of the forces of evil, and
Peter Cushing, in a cameo appear¬
ance as the imprisoned deposed
leader of Jadur. are in fine form,
but the rest of the cast are strictly
from poverty- row. Mickey- Rooney,
in a cameo as Daad El Sur, the
keeper of the three huge metal
monsters, is unintelligible.

Connor and Dark have shown
in their previous films. IAND and
PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT,
that fire can be a most reliable
special effect, and the need for false
excitement has again filled their
screen with pyrotechnics: Alqua¬
zar’s cave is engulfed in flame;
when Hasan and Khasim near the
island of the rose they are confront¬
ed by three huge metal monsters
which spout flame setting the coun¬
tryside on fire. The creatures turn
out to be mechanical statues con¬
trolled by a very modern looking
series of gears and lex ers worked bv
a gibbering Roonev.

The flying carpet sequences,
which could have been the high¬
light of the film, are all too obvious¬
ly models in the long shots, but the
eloseups of the live actors in flight
blend nicely with the background
via good quality rear projection
work. Interior scenes with the car¬
pets, however, are poor. The tex¬
ture of the rear screen action doesn’t
match with the actors astride the
carpet. In one scene, as the carpet is
about to leave the palace, the rear
screen actors seem to direct their
dialog and vision to several feet in
front of the carpet and not at the
two actors riding the floating plat¬
form. Even the small amount of
interest that is left for the multiple-
carpet battle at the conclusion is
reduced to burlesque with the in¬
troduction of a fruit throwing fight.

Schneer and Harryhausen can
sleep easy if this is the best Dark
and Connor can come up with. □

29

Hi!

THE AMITYVILLE
HORROR

“An inexplicable chain
of events that rattles
furiously, but signifies
nothing. .

THF AMITYVII.LF HORROR An AIP rr-
1 raw. 7/79. 117 minutes Color by Movidab
Produced by Roland Saland and Flliot Gei-
vingrr Directed by Stuart Rosenberg Screen
plav by Sandor Stem, based on the book by
jay Anson Music bv Lalo Schifrin. Director
of photography. Fred J. Kocnrkamp Art di-
rector.Jim Swados. Visual effects designed bv
William Cruse.

George Lull.James Brolin

Kathleen Lull Margot Kidder

Father Delaney Rod Steiger

Father Bolen Don Stroud

Amy.Natasha Ryan

j r ff.Michael Sacks

Father Ryan Murray Hamilton

Despite its attempt to raise dra¬
matic suspense out of the “facts" in
the case of George and Kathy Lutz,
as popularized in Jav Anson’s best¬
seller. THE AMITYVILLE HOR¬
ROR founders from the greatest
risk of too much reality", there is no
point.

By hinting at the character life
changes that may have contributed
to the bizarre manifestations in the
colonial house on Long Island, di¬
rector Stuart Rosenberg (COOL
HAND LUKE) and scriptwriter
Sandor Stern (the ex-medical doc¬
tor who penned the underrated
nuclear TV thriller RED ALERT)
couch the growing horror in hu¬
man terms that, however admirable
the intent, actually distance us from
characters we are too tempted to
pass off as merely mad. Beset by the
strains of a new' marriage, a religious
conversion, hostile stepchildren,
and the sudden financial burden of
an $80,000 house so soon after all
this, a bearded James Brolin, as
George, gradually deteriorates from
contented smiles to the crazed look
of a potential killer. We would need
little more than this to find an
equallv convincing Margot Kidder
as his wife, shifting from her erotic
little-girl innocence to suspicion
and evetual wide-eyed terror.

Clearly. Rosenberg knows the
responsibilities of a good director.

by Steven Dimeo

But the realism here is strangely
disaffecting. Brolin seems too sus¬
ceptible to the suggestiveness of a
house where, more than a year
before on November 13, 1974, the
24 year-old Ronald DeFeo, im¬
pelled by “voices," slaughtered his
parents and all four of his siblings.
Lutz’s stepdaughter Amy, played
bv Natasha Ryan from the soaper
Days of Our Lives, seems too obvi-
ouslv taking out repressed hostility’
towards her new father with her in¬
visible pig-like companion Jody.
Even when Kidder finds a grizzled
neighbor at her door, eager to wel¬
come the family with some beer
one minute, then gone the next, we
wonder if her paranoia might not
be ultimately founded on a real-life
hoaxer. Certainly a human intrud¬
er better explains the problems
Brolin has keeping latched the door
to the boat moorage and that inci¬
dent later when both the basement
and front doors are found broken
open from the inside. Likewise,
Satan and scatology may be linked
in folklore, but the odor and strange
wall seepage in such an old house
beside a lake seem here to derive
more from a backed-up septic tank
than from the Dev.l.

For openers, Rosenberg begins
the movie with an effectively long
cut of the face of the house itself
(actually a similar home in Toms
River, New’Jersey’, made up to be a
replica of the original). The skull¬
like side against the night shows us
only the flashes of light from the
gun through the windows as DeFeo
makes his way from one story to
another. A nice touch. Even during
what would otherwise be the audi¬
ence’s slow emotional recovery'
when George and Kathy are taken
through the house by the realtor,
Rosenberg cleverly intercuts the
mundane with rapid-fire shots in
each respective room as seen
through the eyes of the killer. It
may be a little heavy-handed, but
the message is clear.

Attempting to transcend the
episodic limitations of the original
story, Rosenberg and Stern also
contrive suspense that, even if the
characters cannot, pique our curi-
ositv enough to carry us from one
scene to the next. With the help of

Kermit tlumpt into the bluet after being jilted by Mist Pig#

cinematographer Fred J. Koene-
kamp’s carefully composed shots,
for instance, the axe George wields
to split more and more firewood
occupies center stage, particularly
when his partner Jeff (the long-lost
Michael Sacks, not seen since
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE) stops
bv to persuade George to get back
to his contracting work. Similarly,
earlv scenes of the family dog’s
scratching at the base of the brick
wall in the basement keeps us won¬
dering what lurks on the other side
until, spurred on by Jeffs psychic
wife Carolyn, George breaks it
down. This becomes hack work of a
different nature than Stem intends,
though, for they both prove red
herrings. It’s true we may still be
afraid of what George might do
with axe in hand while, on the last
night, he bounds up the stairs to the
attic where his family cowers. But
even after we know the house was
erected where Indians once im¬
mured the insane, George disap¬
pointingly exposes behind that
brick wall nothing more than a
visionary’ alter-ego (played, inci¬
dental^ by Brolin’s real-life broth¬
er). These instances only bring to
light just how desperate the film-
makers are to add artificial life to a
flagging screenplay.

The degeneration of Father De¬
laney (Rod Steiger) perhaps epito¬
mizes the film’s weakness. It is
properly disconcerting when he en¬
ters to bless the house, only to be
attacked by an inexplicable swarm
of flies (this despite the twenty-
degree December temperatures
outdoors), when that room’s door
shuts by itself, and when a disem¬
bodied voice moans, “Get out!”
For those who don’t already know
that Beelzebub means “lord of the
flies," though, this scene, however
spine-tingling, suggests an adver¬
sary in the flies that never again
appear as anything close to a direct
threat. From that point on, Delan¬
ey’s efforts to contact Kathv be¬
come a relentlessly tedious cata¬
logue of strange happenings: bro¬
ken phone connections, stigmata
on Delaney’s hands where he
touches the receiver, a steering
wheel that locks when he is driven
to the Lutz house by Father Bolen

(played by a painfully miscast Don
Stroud), and. in the end. being
struck blind. Even so, we never
know anything about Delaney’s past
that would make us believe he
could be having a spiritual crisis
similar to that of Father Karras in
THE EXORCIST. In point of fact.
Father Delaney never really serves
any purpose at all in the Lutz
storv. We see no demonstration
anvwhere that he even has enough
power to warrant Kathy’s calling on
him in the first place. So those
supernaturallv thwarted attempts
to reach the family become super¬
fluous-mere tricks to thrill, that
do nothing but give Steiger one
more opportunity' to overact.

Nonetheless, even with its flour¬
ish of horror cliches like a raging
thunderstorm as a backdrop, the
family’s climactic night in the house
is well-orchestrated. The strokes
are broad but appropriately omin¬
ous as visions of Brolin doing a
hatchet job on the children justify
Kidder hustling her kids to the attic.
And when Brolin breaks down the
door with his axe, the windstorm
just happens at that moment to
shatter the window’ in slow motion
(though sadly it’s intact again in
subsequent shots). The horrors truly
prove incremental here so that we
fear for Brolin when he has to
return to the house one last time to
retrieve the lost dog.

But just as the family makes
good its escape in the van, titles
abruptlv flash on the screen, assur¬
ing us unnecessarily that the Lutzes
never did return. Worst of all. this
epilogue obliterates the mood that
has been so w ell developed. As if to
apologize for further documentary’
lapses, the filmmakers end the
credits with a declaration that, “Cer¬
tain characters and events have been
changed to heighten dramatic ef¬
fect.’’ But the problem is that, un¬
like THE EXORCIST, to which this
movie becomes just another blood¬
less clone, they have not fictionaliz¬
ed enough. THE AMITYVILLE
HORROR defuses the horror by
diffusing the source. Is it the haunt¬
ed house, the site with its history of
murders, witches and madmen
(and if so, why and how)? Or is it
just troubled George Lutz? His

THE MUPPET MOVIE
. .a cute little vehicle
that should have been a
classic. . .”

THE MUPPET MOVIE An Anociatcd Film
Distribution release. 6/79. 98 minutes. In
Technicolor Produced by Jim Henson. Di¬
rected bv James F raw lev Screenplay byjerry
Juhl and Jack Bums Music and lyrics by Paul
Williams and Kenny Ascher. Production de¬
signer. Joel Schiller.

Kermit the Frog
Miss Piggy
The Great Gonio
Dor Hopper
Max.

.Jim Henson

.Frank Or

.Dave Goeli

. Charles Duming
Austin Pendleton

This is a cute little vehicle that
should have been a classic. Jim
Henson’s bizarre felt menagerie of
animals, birds, street characters,
and furry, indescribable “things,"
have the potential for a kind of

by Lisa Jensen

outrageous comedy-fantasy that
ordinary', flat-footed humans could
never attempt: their ability to pro¬
vide (as the ads teasinglv promise)
“more entertainment than human¬
ly possible.” But it’s human miscal¬
culation and error that character¬
izes this production, from the weak,
burdened screenplay with its tired
jokes, puns and kiddie-level senti¬
mentality, to the roster of superflu¬
ous “guest stars” assembled for
their commercial appeal by pro¬
ducer Sir Lew Grade.

The storv follows nice guy Ker¬
mit the Frog from his humble
swamp origins to fame and fortune
in Hollywood, accompanied by
newfound friends Fozzie Bear and
the legendary' Miss Piggy, and pur¬
sued by the evil Doc Hopper, who
wants to sign up the talented frog to
advertise his chain of french-fried
frog legs franchises. On the road.

l

i

i

i

\

t.ddie Brnton, Xuholas Campbell and Sparks, the cute, blabber mouth robot.

antagonistic stepdaughter? A real
rather than imaginary ghost named
Jody? The spirit of the mad mur¬
derer? The flies? The rebelling toi¬
lets? It’s probably supposed to be
the Devil alone, but in opting for
pseudo-journalistic realities, the di¬
rector has also opted for chaos.

Rosenberg has recognized the
need for structure in ordering the
emotional progression of the lead
characters, bv introducing a degree
of suspense, and by visually rein¬
forcing a mood of terror. But in Irv¬
ing to stick to Anson's version of
reality, he ends up with little more
than what real life already offers
most of us: an inexplicable chain of
events that rattles furiouslv, but
finally signifies nothing. □

Kermit and company meet up w’ith
various guest stars reduced, in most
cases, to a few snippets of dialogue.
The effect of this is more distracting
than entertaining.

But when the Muppets them¬
selves take over, the movie achieves
the occasional heights of absurd,
inspired lunacy' we have come to
expect from Henson’s popular TV
series. Characters such as Dr. Teeth
and his Electric Mayhem rock band
are wildly funny, and scenes of the
normallv-stationary Kermit ped¬
dling a bicycle down a busy street,
or the Great Gonzo borne through
the sky by a clutch of helium bal¬
loons, are as lyrical as they are
technically amazing. It’s a shame
this movie is tailored for kids (right
down to the bland Paul Williams
songs) —another example of film¬
land moguls ignoring the huge
adult audience for genre films. □

THE SHAPE OF
THINGS TO COME
“. . .a slur to the good
name of H. G. Wells.”

THE SHAPF OF THINGSTO COM F A Film
Vrmurrs Release 7/79(78). 91 minutes. In
Eastmanrolor. Produced by William David¬
son. Executive producer. Ham Alan Towers
Directed by George McGowan. Screenplay by
Martin l-ager. based on the screen story by
H. G Wells. Director of photography. Rcgi
nald Moms. Edited by Stan Cole Music bv
Paul Hoffert.

O™*.Jack Pa lam r

Senator Smedley.John Ireland

Dr. John Cabal Barry Morse

J**°n .Nicholas Campbell

Niki.Carol Lynley

Sparks.Glen Swanson

Perhaps it’s a cliche, but a ma¬
jority of science fiction films see
man’s view of the future and his re¬
lationship with machinery as large¬
ly pessimistic. There have been a
few exceptions, one of them being
TH I NGS TO COME (1936), direct¬
ed by William Cameron Menzies
from a script by H G. Wells. Wells’
script was filled with enthusiasm
for what the future held. It had a
gripping, child like awe which en¬
veloped and lifted the viewer. Its
script concluded on this thought-
provoking note:

PASSWORTHY

Wc arc such little creatures. Poor hu¬
manity. So fragile and so weak.

CABAL

Little animals, eh?

PASSWORTHY
Little animals.

CABAL

If we are no more than little animals, we

by Lee Rolfe

must snatch at our little scraps of happi¬
ness and live and suffer and pass, mat¬
tering no more— than all little animals
do — or have done. (Pointing to the stars)
It is that— all the universeor nothing. .
which shall it be. Passwonhv .- 1 Which
shall it be?

This brief bit of dialogue, more
than anv other in the 1936 film,
shows how THINGS TO COME
was filled with spirit, visionary
awareness, and yet inspired fantasy.
It woos the imagination.

In order to discuss the 1979
Canadian-made THE SHAPE OF
THINGS TO COME, it is neces¬
sary to mention the greatness of the
classic Menzies/Wells effort. Where
THINGS TO COME had a charm¬
ing naivete, THE SHAPE OF
THINGS TO COME is merely
naive, even amateurish. And to give
this recent production some cre¬
dence, Wells’ name has been fool¬
ishly placed before the tide. This
film is not so much a remake as a
sequel, a slur to Wells’ good name
and vet another embarrassment to
the fledgling Canadian film indus¬
try that produced it.

Earth, we are told, in a written
prologue roll-up a la STAR WARS,
has been completely wasted by
something called The Great Robot
Wars. Mankind lives in a volumin¬
ous domed city, a la LOGAN’S
RLJN, called New Washington.
Clever, eh? In order to survive, it
seems a colony on the moon, a la
SPACE: 1999, needs a constant sup¬
ply of something called Radic-Q-2,
the antidote for radiation sickness.
And the only source for the magical
mineral comes from a distant plan¬
et, Delta III, where a maniacal sci¬
entist, once the protege of New
Washington’s most distinguished
scholar, has overthrown Delta Ill’s
government. This madman, plaved
by Jack Palance with his usual stiff
smugness, wants to be New’ Wash¬
ington’s benevolent dictator, or no
more Radic-Q-2. All the while.
Delta Ill’s pretty’ ex-leader, played
by a bland Carol Lynley', tries to
win back her governorship.

To the rescue comes Dr. John
Cabal, with the assistance of his son
and his son’s girlfriend. As Cabal.
Barrv Morse adopts a properly ear¬
nest and concerned expression, but
with the attitude that any real effort
here would be totally useless. Oh. I
almost forgot to mention the cute,
blabber mouth robot (what’s a sci¬
ence fiction film these days without
one?). This one spouts Shakesper-
ian witticisms:

“No, Sparks,” says the shapely
lady scientist, wagging her finger at
the newly-programmed machine.
"We’re about to leave for Delta III,
so you stay here.”

“Wither thou goest, I goest,” it
sighs, waddling along beside her.

At this point, “oh-no’s” were
fairly audible in the audience—
perhaps it’s expecting too much
from scriptwriter Martin Lager to
attain the spirit and intelligence of
Wells, especially when borrowing
his name as well as the story’s title.
But certainly director George Mc¬
Gowan could rise above something
as infantile as a carbon-copv BAT-
TLESTAR CALACTICA. □

THE MAFU CAGE
“A visually imaginative
but disappointingly
muddled conception.”

THE MAFU CAGE An American General
Films Release 1979 99 minute* In Metro-
rolor. Produced by Diana Young Directed by
Karen Arthur Scrrenplay by Don Christian.
Executive producer*. Karen Arthur and Gary
L Triano. Visual consultant, John Bailcv
Edited by Carol Littleton. Production de¬
signer. Conrad E. Angone. Costume design¬
er. Nani Yee Grrnell. Music by Roger Kella-
wav. Drawings and mural. Roger landrv.

Ellen.Lee Grant

Cissy.Carol Kane

Zom.Will Geer

David.James Olson

Mafu Budar

In its thematic study of the fine
line between madness and normal¬
ity, the sacred and profane, the
chief conflict of THE MAFU CAGE
lies between the rather contrived
storyline and the insistent, often
mesmerizing manner in which it is
told. Blending elements of psycho¬
logical melodrama, perverse black
comedy, and the horror thriller, the
film is a visually imaginative but
disappointingly muddled concep¬
tion.

The plot concerns the daughters
of a famed naturalist who devoted
his life to the study of wild pri¬
mates. Ellen (Lee Grant), a prac¬
tical, well-dressed and responsible
astronomer, and Cissy (Carol
Kane), an irrational child-woman
who wears the beads and feathers of
her African childhood, share a de¬
caying old jungle mansion cram¬
med with relics of their late father’s
life. Within this interior riot of trop¬
ical foliage and weird artifacts is the
enormous “Mafu” cage where Cis¬
sy, an artist in her less demented
moments, keeps a succession of
apes and monkeys for close study,
and where she inevitably tortures
and kills them in her periodic fits of
blind fury.

The manner in which the tenta¬
cles of Cissy’s psychosis reach out
to engulf Ellen and the sane, sensi¬
ble world she clings to is the film’s
most chilling aspect. There’s some¬
thing masochistic in Ellen’s martyr¬
dom, her keeping Cissy at home

by Lisa Jensen

and out of an institution, that goes
beyond the sisters’ rather gratui¬
tous sexual relationship. And the
shifting tide of possessiveness, de¬
mentia. rage and revenge between
the two women is the core of the
film. Their relationship is framed
bv two male characters who repre¬
sent the outside world: Zorn, a
paternal animal trainer who keeps
Cissv supplied with primates, and
David. Ellen’s co-worker and lover,
to whom she is afraid to commit
herself.

At times, David is meant to be
the romantic hero who can save
Ellen from Cissy’s stranglehold, but
he is often portrayed as an object of
derision. A humorless, passionless
lover, he joylessly makes love to
Ellen, on a cold staircase inside the
observatory, in stark contrast to the
moody, moonlit eroticism of the

Annik Borel, u*oo/. woof.

LEGEND OF THE
WOLF WOMAN
. .fails to meet even
the simple demands of
an exploitation feature.”

LEGEND OF THE WOLF WOMAN A Dt-
mrnsiiin Pirturr* Rclrasc 6/79(77). In Color.
M minute* Producer. Mickey Zide. Directed
bv R D. Silver. Screenplay by Howard Ro»v
Director of photography, Dennis Bull. Music
by Susan Niroletti. A Urry Woolner Presenta¬
tion. Italian credits: Produced by Diego Alchi-
mede for Dialchi Film, s.r.l. Directed bv Rino
di Silvestro. Music by Coriolano Gori.

Cast: Anne Borel. Fred Stafford. Tino Carey,
Elliot Zamuto. Ollie Reynolds, Andrea Scott.
Italian cast listing: Annik Borel. Frederick
Stafford. Howard Ross. Dagmar Lassander.
TinoCarraro, Elio Zamuto. Osvaldo Ruggien.

The tide is a cheat. The pale and
haggard “wolf woman” Daniella

by Jeff Stafford
32

sisters’ sexual encounters. And in
the story’s climactic centerpiece,
when he makes the fatal mistake of
visiting Cissy in Ellen’s absence, he
comes across as a buffoon, salivat¬
ing after the pretty psychotic’s crafts'
flattery and. with leering cheerful¬
ness. allowing himself to be chain¬
ed up in Cissy’s cage.

Caught in a limbo between
horror and conventional melo¬
drama, THE MAFU CAGE is a
near-triumph of mood over con¬
tent. The one reliable constant is
Carol Kane’s absorbing perfor¬
mance. As Cissy, every inch of her
l>eing quivers with the burden of
her madness, and with her extra¬
ordinary features, undisciplined
hair, and singsong voice, she gives
the eerie impression of a creature
not only from another culture, but
possibly from another world. □

(Annik Borel) is not in the throes of
Ivcanthropv. Instead, she is a homi¬
cidal maniac driven to violence by
the male sex. She has a nastv habit
of biting men on the throat during
foreplav, and pulling out a bloody
mouthful of meat with her dull
canines. Why is she behaving in this
rude and outrageous manner? You
shouldn’t ask. Because the film’s
producers haven’t a clue, either. A
lot of explanations are given for
Daniella’s peculiar behavior, but
none of them bare close scrutiny.
Were Daniella’s ancestors in reality
practitioners of witchcraft? Is there
any truth to the rumors of a family
curse? One gets the feeling that
those responsible for this film are
praying desperately for the audience
to tie it all up into some kind of
coherence.

Put simply. LEGEND OF THE
WOLF WOMAN is a noisy mess.
Director Rino Di Silvestro’s idea of
a gripping narrative is to take a
scenario of cloddish expositors’
dialogue and interrupt it regularly
with brutality and soft core sex.
Logic be damned. The continuity is
so ragged the film looks like a
trailer reel for coming attractions.
As with other inferior Italian thrill¬
ers, there are lots of meaningless
zoom shots, a brassy, incongruous
score, garish lighting, and a pervad¬
ing atmosphere of sleaziness. The
latter is particularly evident during
the first fifteen minutes, as Daniella
masturbates in front of a mirror,
hallucinates that she is making it
with an iguana, and voveuristically
enjoys her sister and brother-in-law-
screwing in bed. This girl’s got
problems!

An epilopie lacked onto the
final credits informs us that LEG¬
END OF THE WOLF WOMAN is
based on an actual sordid case in
Italy in 1968. Though not in evi¬
dence here, the real facts of the
rampaging murderess and her
crimes may have provided a skillful
screenwriter with some interesting
material. However, this WOLF
WOMAN fails to meet even the
simple demands of an exploitation
feature, and once again brings up
an issue that haunts the jaded
movie-goer must genre complet¬
es keep subjecting themselves to
these atrocious Italian horrors? □

AMERICATHON
. .is an undisciplined
satire in need of a
teething ring. . .”

AMERICATHON A United Amm Release
7/79. 96 minutes In Technicolor. Produced
by Joe Roth Directed by Neil Israel Screen
play by Israel. Michael Mislove and Monica
Johnson, story by Israel, Peter Bergman and
Philip Proctor Director of photographs,
Gerald Hirschfeld. Production designer. Stan
Jollev Edited by John C. Howard Executive
producer, Edward Rosen. Music bv the Brat h
Boys. Flvis Costello. Alan Parsons, etc.

Monts Rushmore Harvey Borman

Enc MrMerkin P^irr R'^gert

Vanderhoof.Fred Willard

Mouling Jackson *anr Burbs

Lucs Beth Nancy Morgan

Chet Roosevelt John Ritter

j rm .Richard Schaal

The vear is 1998. Americans,
without gas for nearly twenty years,
have taken to living in their cars and
jogging to work. The White House
is under lease to the big unions and
the President has rented apartments
in Los Angeles. He has also put the
American economy over a barrel,
borrowing S40 billion from the
world’s richest man, an aged Chero¬
kee who now wants his money back.

This is the setting of Neil Is¬
rael’s AMERICATHON. in which
the President stages a telethon to
hoist his country’ out of debt. It is a
superficially humorous film, suc¬
cessful as often as it is not, focusing
on the manner in which Americans
are misled by their better insticts
(i.e., patriotism). Like a telethon,
which tries to be all things to all
people. AMERICATHON is a typi¬
cal seventies comedy, it tries to be
all things to all college students. It is
an undisciplined satire in need of a
teething ring— its bite never reaches
the meat of its matter.

Despite the film’s future setting,
the an director has limited all futur¬
ism to the 1980s or thereabouts.
Music hasn’t evolved much past
punk rock (the score is pretty good
by contemporary standards); fash¬
ions are something like today s,
with the exception of gym shoes,
now added to every ensemble. But
AMERICATHON is not out to cor¬
ner the science fiction market.

For reasons of dramatic thrust.
Presidential advisor Vincent Van-
derhofT (Fred Willard) is hired by
the United Hebrab Republic (fol¬
lowing in the united Hebrew-Arab
cause) to sabotage the Americathon
with rotten acts and performers, so
anti-American interests can pay the
national debt and rule the country’.
VanderhofTbooks thirty’ days’ worth
of ventriloquist acts, marching
bands, and Vietnamese punk rock¬
ers. He also hires as emcee the
aging, pill-popping celebrity’ Monty’
Rushmore (Harvey Konnan), star
of the transvestite sitcom “Both
Mother and Father.”

Fortunately for America, media
genius Eric McMerkin (Peter Rie-
gert) is called in to fortify the tele¬
thon with top acts, to save not only
the countrv but the film as well.
He books a man wrestling to the
death with the world’s last gas-
fueled automobile, a boxing match
between a woman and her son, and

by Tim Lucas

auctions off San Diego to the high¬
est bidder. It wouldn’t be revealing
a secret to say that the Americathon
raises the S40 billion despite Van-
derhoffs sabotage, as the film is
told in flashback like a history les¬
son (to allow for an inconsequen¬
tial epilogue); nor would it be tell¬
ing to sav that Rushmore has to
literally bleed to put them over the
top, because that’s a stale idea.

Aesthetically speaking. AMERI¬
CATHON is ultimately defeated by
its uncanny knack for depthless
insights into the greed and trickery
of American ideals. With its screen-
sized flashing neon “GIVE!" sign
and bright stage, the Americathon
is a flagrant display of lost dignity’
and triumphant greed. But all this
gets in terms of script reinforcement
is a moment when Harvey Korman
shouts. “Dignity?” pulling down
his pants and adding. “There’s vour
dignity!” One almost laughs, but
immediately thinks better of it. In
fact, it is Korman’s performance
that suffers most from Isreal’s inde¬
cisiveness over what AMERICA¬
THON is about. In his first starring
role, Konnan tries to inject much
pathos into the hollow Rushmore
character (you may ask how a fading
star in search of that last brass ring
can possibly be written without feel¬
ing, but they’ve managed it).

Shoddy characterization is the
film’s major problem. It is equally
dear in Nancy Morgan’s Lucy, who
starts out as the President’s empty-
headed lover and ends up on the
wayside with McMerkin, as she un¬
dergoes a heartbreaking metamor¬
phosis which promises a volcanic
payoff—but she all but disappears
from the last reel. McMerkin. hero
and narrator, is the most minor of
the lead characters, limited to recit¬
ing the script’s serious lines and
carrying a clipboard around. And
John Ritter is lousy as the President,
a weak Jerry’ Brown parody.

On the bright side is Zane Buz-
bv’s Vietnamese punk rock singer
Moulinglackson. a Linda Ronstadt
take-off by way of Patti Smith, a
characterization that stays afloat
through a cheap rendezvous with
Ritter that should, by rights, have
foiled her mystique. Richard Shaal
as the Vice-president is given little
to sav. his portrayal limited to grunts
and pantomime, but proves himself
a comedian of classic potential. Last¬
ly, much credit is due Chief Dan
George as the $40 billion Cherokee,
who exhibits the talent for saving
the same line (“I gotta eat too, you
know. Does that make me a bad
guy?") over and over, making it
funnier and funnier each time.

If AMERICATHON has any
strengths at all. it has the power to
entertain the first time around —
but it leaves a sour aftertaste. Had it
stuck to parody, it would have been
truer to its intentions. Satire is
tougher, it has to hurt a little.
AMERICATHON doesn’t sting or
even ruffle the hair of its many
targets. And when it accidentally
makes the audience think, it leads
them only to problems it has no
ambition to solve.

It’s enough to give you the red,
white and blues.

VAMPIRI

Richard lynch shows longella how it's done

BLUE SUNSHINE (Jc-ff Liebcnnan)
Cinema Shares I in' L H/7‘* 7H . 97
minutes, color. With: Zalman King.
Roliert Walden. Deborah Winters.
Mark Goddard. Ann Cooper.

Jeff Lieberman’s long-delayed
follow-up to SQUIRM finds the
director in surer control of his re¬
sources as ten years after the fact, a
group of Stanford graduates find
that ingestion of Blue Sunshine a
special batch of LSD cobbled to¬
gether by a fellow student), causes
latent baldness, homicidal psycho¬
pathy and general bad vibes. Work¬
ing from his own script, Lieberman
loosen s the story’s conventional
horror/mvsterv elements to include
a keenly observed reflection on the
passing of a generation; ironically,
the victims of this bit of nastv-
minded acid paranoia have drifted
awav from counterculture, assum¬
ing drears roles that their group
once so vigorously attacked— house¬
wife, politician, doctor, cop. This
sort of satire’s rare in the field, and
despite BLUE SUNSHINE’S acting
problems (with lead King as the
chief culprit . its visual sense and
character preoccupations raise the
notion that Lieberman mav bear
further watching. Paul M. Summon

THE HOUND OETHE BASKF.R-
VILLES[Paul Morrissey] Hemdale
Int’l. 11/78. 84 minutes, color. With;
Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Den¬
holm Elliott. Joan Greenwood. Max
Wall. Terrv-Thomas. Irene Handl.

This parody of Sherlock Holmes,
mystery and horror films, got shown
in England, but never here. It |ust
isn’t very funny, h is silly however.
aJmost«embarrassinglv so, for all in
solved, and that inc hides executive
produtei Mithael While RO< h\
HORROR PICTURE SHOW, the
comedy team of Dudley Moore and
Peter Cook, who w rote as well as per¬
formed in this travesty, and director
Paul M<imssev(ANIVY WARHOL’S
FRANKENSTEIN & DRACULA).
But don’t miss it! About fifty min¬
utes into this plodding mess, out of
nowhere comes the most brilliant,
inspired and hilarious send-up of
THE EXORCIST imaginable. It’s so
good, it makes all the other eighty
odd minutes of boredom worth sit¬
ting through. Frederick S. Clarke

lilt HOI XI) m nil BASKFRMUFS
t fnissessed Joan Creenwood lakes Dudley Moore <i< Dr. It atson for a turn on her bed.

John Standing, Charles Gray.

It is awfully hard to have any
sympathy for die protagonists in
I HF LEGACY: two beautiful, laid
back California types Katharine
Ross and Sam Elliott), who come
into S 50.000 as down payment for
an architectural job in England.
Once there, they land in the lap of
luxury after a minor motorcycle
accident; they also land in the midst
of a most genteel gToupof Satanists,
who are bumped off graphically
one-bv one. by means of drowning,
burning, choking, stabbing, shoot¬
ing and falling off the roof. The
murderer turns out to be a feeble
old man John Standing . who is so
far gone that he requires an oxygen
room, not |ust a tent. It is only one
of the many holesjimtm Sangster’s
storv glosses over that this bedridden
ancient, whose makeup is reminis¬
cent of the Manitou. is able to
dodder around to do each murder.
The only actor who doesn’t sleep¬
walk through this film, hoping it
won’t be released, is Margaret Tv-
/ack who played Derek Jacobi's
mother on Masterpiece Theatre’s I.
CLAUDIUS She is quite effective
in a role similar to that Billie White-
law played in THE OMEN THE
LEGACY is old hat; we’ve seen it all
before and certainly done much
better— especially the ho-hum end¬
ing after seeing five faithful Satan¬
ists have their loyalty repaid bv
painful deaths, whs would anyone
willingly join their ranks.’

Judith P Harris

METEOR (Ronald Neame| A I P.
10/79, I0S minutes, color K* scope.
With: Scan Connery. Natalie Wood.
Karl Malden. Brian Keith

A five-mile hunk of charred rock
is hunting through space at 30.000
miles per hour and. at it's present
trajectory, will collide with Earth in
six days. Obviously getting bar k at
Irwin Allen for pushing special ef¬
fects at the expense of character
development when they collabor¬
ated on THE POSE I DEN ADVEN¬
TURE. director Ronald Neame uses
his- and our—allotted time to poke
fun at Soviet-U S. hvpocriss both
countries refuse to own up to orbit¬
ing nuclear missies w hit h. in tandem,
could stop the meteor) and to plav
out the traditional fued between
dumb politicals and even less astute
military brass. Further. Neame feels
compelled to personalize every pre-

collision strike h\ zeroing m on one
soon-to-hemme disaster victim. Like
everything else in their S1 7-million
B movie, this approach is terribh
civilized and self conscious. The
big special effects consist of some
solid work the* Hong Kong tidal
wave , some tinted stock footage
the New York fragment shower),
and a bootleg skiing death from
New World Pic lure’s AVALANCHE).
The nearing threat mav be more
credible than most, but it’s also
twice as boring; a slowly revolving
c hunk of coal. Bat kin 1951. George
Pal and Rudolf Mate managed this
whole business with a lot more
panache m WHEN WORLDSCOL-
I IDE Glenn Lovell

PARTS-THE CLONUS HOR¬
ROR | Robert S Fivesonj Group I.
10/79, 89 minutes, color. With: Tun
Donnellv. Keenan Wynn. Paulette
Breen. Peter Graves. Dick Sargent
Basic alls, this tale of a secret gov¬
ernment cloning operation run for
the* benefit of bigw igs has been done
before THE RESURRECTION OF
/At HARY WHEELER. 1971 . It’s
given a fresh slant here, however,
bv making our point-of-view that of
the protagonist, a clone whose* grow¬
ing self-awareness leads him to es¬
cape into the outside world, find his
donee, and blow the* whistle on this
messy business of growing human
beings and then butchering them
for spare body parts. Despite a few
low-budget gafles. it’s an intelligent,
engrossing treatment of the theme,
rather limply directed but well-writ-
ten and acted. Considering expecta¬
tions Group 1 makes New World

Pic ture's look like MGM . I mav be
overreacting. Frederick S. Clarke

VAMPIRE (E W. Swarkhammerj
ABC TV. 10/7/79. 100 minutes, col¬
or. With: Richard Lynch, F. G Mar¬
shall. Jason Miller. Kathryn Harrold.
Barrie* Youngfellow.

Prohibited bv censors from us¬
ing gore and violence, this elegant
TV movie rt*lie*s instead on strong
characterization anel stylish inven¬
tion. The vampire i Richard I.vnch),
w ho rises from the earth in modern
San Francisco, is blonde* and urbane,
while the hero (Jason Miller is dark
and moody. Midway through the
drama, vampire hunter E G. Mar¬
shall tells a frightening flashbac k
tale which by itself makes the* film
memorable VAMPIRE is one of
the best-plotted, most dignified un¬
dead chillers of the* seventies.

Hill Kelley

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS

(Fred Walton) Columbia, 8/79. 97
minutes, color. With; Carol Kane.
Charles Doming, Rachel Roberts,
Tonv Bee klev. Colleen Dewhurst.

What showed every indication
of being this season’s pure shock
successor to HALLOWEEN is. in
fact, a self conscious film-school
exercise that succumbs to crude
editing and a stvle that’s too studied
and derivitive to be truly horrifying.

Things stan promisingly enough
with babysitter Carol Kane being
harassed by an anonymous caller
who turns out to be m the same
house; but once debuting director
Fred Walton and co-scenarist Steve
Feke— expanding their 1978 short
— flash forward seven years, their
fine opening premise gives wav to a
routine chase thriller with panting
private-eve Charles Durning always
one slamming door behind Tonv
Berkley’s escape. The sunken-eved
Berkley is very convincing, as are
Colleen Dewhurst, hard-bitten bar¬
fly, and the L A. Skidrow* locales.
But too much time is wasted dwell¬
ing on Berkley’s Boogevman ala
Robert Mite hum’s vengeful ex-con
in CAPE FEAR When it comes
time for his psycho to stalk Kane a
second time, we know too much
about his anguish and too little*
about Ins motivation to really side
with either victim or victimizer.
Definitely of the-one-shock WAIT
UNTIL DARK school

THE LEGACY|RichardMarquand)
Universal, 9/79, 100 minutes, color.
With: Katherine Ross. Sam Elliott.

(ilenn lot ell

33

TANTAS ISLAND

TANYA’S ISLAND [8:4:351 is
now winding-up post prod net ion in
Montreal for .1 possible November
release. Prior to the start of print ipal
photography in |une. another writer
was brought in lor a rewrite of the
Miek Garris/Alfred Sole sc ript. Fi¬
nal sc reenplay credit will be co¬
opted b\ producer Pierre- Brousseau,
who conceived the original story).
Reportedly, the changes are mostly
those of emphasis. The story, pre¬
sented as Tanya’s fantasy derived
from one of her artist-lover’s paint¬
ings'. concerns the- gradually de¬
veloping private war between the
artist, Loiio, and the beast, with
Tama the prize of the victor. As in
the earlier draft, there is a role
reversal — l.obo becomes more sav¬
age as the beast becomes more
human—but the- beast is now seen
as more menacing than sympathetic.

Direc tor Sole was not available
to discuss his “Beauty and the
Beast” film, but there is another
story to be told that is at least as
interesting. Its principals are the
man behind the beast, and the man
inside* the- beast. Rob Boltin, the
man behind the beast, served his
four year apprenticeship under Ric k
Baker working on KING KONG,
STAR WARS. THF. Ft T RY. and oth¬
er films. Since striking out on his
own. Bottin has not lacked for as¬
signments. and remains very much
in demand. Don McCleod, the man
inside the beast, is a mime and
actor making his second in-suit per¬
formance in a film for TANYA’S
ISLAND.

The original concept for the
beast came from Ri< k Baker, when
he was offered the film. Sole and
Brousseau had been thinking in
terms of a standard black-haired
gorilla. For this particular applica¬
tion, Baker found that hackneyed
concept uncomfortably close to in¬
numerable programmers of yore,
and made it clear that Ins panic ipa-
tion was dependent on being given
a free hand to bring in some fresh
ideas. He wanted to create some¬
thing unusual and exotic. The result
was a cross between a baboon and
an orangutan (dubbed the Boom-
Orang), with certain man like char¬
acteristics, plus a golden mane. Bot¬
tin |okinglv refers to the- beast as
“your basic blonde, blue-eved. all-
American. surfer monkey.” Baker
got as far as designing the Boom-

bv Jordan R. Fox

I) I) It 1 nters & Richard Sargent.

Orang. but had to leave to rejoin
Universal’s INCREDIBLE SHRINK¬
ING WOMAN when production
abruptly resumed on that stalled
project. Bottin came in as the person
best able to execute Baker’s design.

Construction of the suit followed
a series of set procedures that Bottin
had been through time and again
during his apprenticeship. First, the
various c asts of McCleod’s anatomv
were taken. Molds were made, and
the body parts cast out of foam rub-
In-r (slip rubber for the- hands and
feet). A one piece suit made out of a
stretch-nvlon material called Span-
dex. custom-sized to fit McCleod,
was secured from N1. Stevens De¬
signs. a leader in this field. This
served as the core of the final suit. It
was‘built onto’ by sewing and gluing
on each foam rubber body piece
e.g. pectoral muscles), much in the
manner of appliances except for
the- strength of the- bond. .Surface-
most was the final layer of hair,
made out of wig-wefts (numerous
small pieces of fabric butted up
against each other and sew n togeth¬
er, each piece sprouting ten individ¬
ual hairs), with additional strands
of hair punc hed through by hand.
The muc h costlier and far more-
time-consuming method is to use a
nvlon mesh material as the core,
and to have each hair sewn on
individually bv hand. This is the
method used bv Stuart Freeborn in
creating his apes for the Dawn of
Man sequence in 2001: A SPACE
ODYSSEY. Time and budget per¬
mitting. it is the best way to go, as it
results m a suit that breathes, has a
finer flexibility, and presents the
best possible appearance. All that
notwithstanding. Bottin felt that his
less elaborate approach yielded a
remarkably good result, in all re¬
spects save one. And that, as we
shall see, is a flaw that can be fatal
only to the wearer.

Realism was an important con¬
sideration in thedc-sign of the Boom-
Orang. Chest muscles were insisted
on bv Sole, over Bonin’s initial
objection, to replace the front mane
that had earlier been conceived as a
complement to the back mane. Al¬
though TANYA’S ISLAND was en¬
visioned always as an R-rated film,
a controversy arose over the depic¬
tion of external genitalia. “It was in
Ru k’s design (to have it).” remarked
Bottin. “ — the family |ewels and
everything. So we had this produc¬
tion meeting. We were all sitting
around going. ‘Genitals or no geni¬
tals? How many nay on the genitals?’
And there’d be a show of hands.
‘How many yea on the genitals?’
This went on for a couple of hours.
Finally. Alfred made an executive
decision: no privates on the mon¬
key ” Instead, there is an ambiguous
tuft of fur strategically placed. Iron¬
ically. it was Bottin who was assigned
to “castrate” Richard Pryor in a
segment (later censored) of the co¬
median’s short-lived variety series.
Cautions Bottin. “I don’t want to
be known as the guv who always gets
the genitals.”

The really complicated work on
the Boom-Orang was the construc¬
tion of the head and its control
mechanisms. The head began with

a fiberglass underskull shaped some¬
thing like- a hockev goalie’s helmet,
but with added room allowing for
the mechanical parts. Foam rubber
head and facial appliances (some of
them mobile, as in the case of the
nose. lips, and brow pieces) were
built up over the underskull, and
the covering layer of hair added to
them. A realistic tongue and finely
detailed dental work fills the mouth
cavitv. Don's blue eyes were the
only thing shared with the- creature
and visit>le from the- outside, leading
to the beast’s being named Blue in
the final script.

To motivate the many possible-
facial movements called for. Bottin
designed a dual system of controls.
The first and major system was
based on eight different cables con¬
nectable at the back of the head.
Push-pull cable action mechanisms,
operating muscle-tendon analogs,
have been made famous as a moti¬
vating technique bv Carlo Ramhal-
di. Rambaldi is said to have used
this technique in Italy lor years.
Bottin maintains, however, that Ram¬
baldi only developed this technique
to its CE3K/ALIEN level of perfec¬
tion, after studying Rick Baker’s
exquisite KING KONG heads, that
were also operated by sophisticated
cable action systems. Some of the
possible facial movements of the
head included: several kinds of snarl
left side upper, right side upper,
full upper, and full mouth baring
the teeth); ear or nose wriggling;
different wonderment type expres¬
sions utilizing the brow pieces; real¬
istic chewing; and even a cheek-
puffing snore. Sinc e- Boltin’s cables
were-only about six feet long, cable
control could not be used in action
scenes, most long shots, certain
other angles, or any situation where
no clever concealment could be
arranged for the operators). “It was
like a magic trick." said Bottin,
“trying to figure out different wavs
of keeping me hid.” Depending on
the shot, he might be there on the
floor (below frame), under water,
or out of sight behind a sand dune.

When the- cables could not be
used, the internal backup system
came into play. A lever-action mech¬
anism inside the head allowed Mc¬
Cleod to activate some of the- more
frequently used fac ial motions on
his own. To effect this, the back of
the- beast’s tongue becomes a cup
strapped under the wearer’s chin.
Bv moving his jaw in different wavs.
McCleod would pull the- cup whic h
action moved small metal bars,
springs, and gears. This secondary’
system could not produce the big
dramatic motions, or give as fine a
degree of control as the- cables, but
it did prove quite useful.

“With the cables.” Bottin ex¬
plained. “we’d have to rehearse
everything. Before the scene, Alfred
would tell Don what he wanted.
Thev’d give us a few seconds, and
Don and I would leave the crew.
Don would sav ‘I’m going to move
like this.’ I’d have to determine
which c ables to pull at which mo¬
ment to give the right expression.
He has to move right, to know what
I’m doing on the outside, and we
both have to coordinate these tilings

/ op: /) I) l« inters <11 Tanya, in a Beauty
and the Beast" fantasy. hut with more 01 rrt
sexual overtones. Mitidlc. Ihe heast of the
story. designed by Hick Raker and built by Rob
Bottin. takes an oxygen break between scenes
Bottom The beast unmasked, mime Don
McCleod. with t). D W inters during filming
in Puerto Rico. Irft: Tanya's fantasies about
the beast are triggered by the breakup of her
relationship with artist/lover Richard Sargent
and the large canvass of an ape he is untrking
on at the time Right Special effects makeup
artist Rob Bottin fits Met lend with the fiber
glass underskull which controls the Beast 1
complex facial movements. Additional brotv.
cheek and lip mechanisms are y et to be added.

. . . Still. Blue’s eves are the most
important thing No matter how-
good the face is. if he’s not showing
any emotion it w ill all look mechani¬
cal. “And that is where the advantage
of a good mime and actor comes in.
Savs McCleod, “You can give the
proper movements to make a char¬
acter come alive, rather than just
somebody shuffling around in a
suit. In a lot of pictures they just get
anyone and stick them in the suit,
loiter they wonder why it looks like
crap on the screen.

“Except for the cables, the suit
was very easy to work in. very flexible.
The- Spandex base, and the rubber
Rob had molded were thin enough
so that even subtle movements could
register on film. . The biggest
limitation was the- heat (on tropical
Puerto Rican locations). Now the
suit was about b() pounds when it
left L. A., but up to 90 pounds from
dav one on, because of the water
retention. It never dried out, and
even if it did. I’d sweat 10 pounds
just like that. I had to drink liquids
through a tube continuously, |ust
to keep from passing out.”

Adds Bottin. “You could just
poke it (the suit) with your finger,
and water would squirt out. Two
blow dryers and a heater going all
night couldn't dry it. and there’d be
another life form growing in the
suit We constructed the- thing so it
would last, but foam pieces would
get drenc hed and rip loose.” Men¬
tion nondissolving glue and other
vaunted water-proofing measures
supposedly used by John Chambers
for ISLAND OF DR MOREAU,
and Bottin |ust shakes his head in a
deadly ‘don’t-vou-lM*lieve-ii’ gesture-.
Frequent repair work to keep the
suit looking good for continuity
might have posed difficulties for
Bottin. but the Boom-Orang’s non-
self-ventilating design posed a ques¬
tion of out and out survival for
McCleod. An hour of effort was
required to get the suit 011 . fully and
properly, and since the- head fit
tight to the* body, neither was it an
easy matter to get out again. Add in
the- heat and the typical long wait
between shots, and you have a
potential danger. “Don was rcalls
great about it- but one day he- bit
the dust.”

They were preparing to shoot a
scene in some hundred foot deep
caves. Air circulation in the caves
was poor. Suddenly McCleod called
for his air tank and collapsed. As he
began to lose consciousness^ he re¬
members, he felt sure it was a
stroke. When Mc Cleod came out of
it, he was 111 a hospital. A heart

I

*

34

stimulant and other life-saving mea¬
sures had been necessary. Later on,
he found out all that had transpired
from the time of his collapse. Bonin's
crew had quickly gotten the beast
head off Doing this, thev found
McCleod already as blue as his
character’s name. They then veiled
up to the cave’s entrance for the
paramedics. Bonin recalled, “Every¬
body* s panicking, because the para¬
medics are supposed to be on set at
all times. Minutes are passing, and
the guy’s dying. We looked up out
ol the hole and the paramedics are
there staring down into the cave.
The gafler runs up the ladder and
says, ‘What the hell’s the matter
with you guys?! Aren’t you going to
help him?* And one of them an¬
swers, ‘We thought it was part of the
movie.”*

There was no possibilitv of Me-
Cleod’s getting out via ladder, so
the c ameraman rigged his Steadicam
harness as a hoist, and an enormous
grip hauled the prostrate mime all
the wav up by hand. Someone’s
visiting girlfriend just happened to
be a nurse, and took over between
location and hospital. The problem
turned out to be loss of the bodv’s
electrolyte function through exhaus¬
tion and dehydration. Still, a close
call. “Everyone was extra nice to
Don after that.*’

Pressure, boredom, frustration,
the extremes and hazards of the
film’s locations—all these things
took their toll. To preserve sanitv,
some kind of an outlet was essential.
That is the explanation for outtake
scenes, such as a supposedly tender
one between Tanya and Blue*, in
which Bonin’s crew actuated all
eight cables at once, producing a
ridiculous phantasmagoria of facial
expression. On another occasion.
McCleod turned up at a popular
local disco in full beastly attire, and
danced with a 300 pound grip. “It
definitely cleared the floor out,”
laughs McCleod.

TANYA’S ISLAND can boast of
a couple of distinctions for man-in¬
suit filmmaking. There is at least
one sex scene between Tanya and
the beast. McCleod, found it quite
bizarre: “The effects guvs with their
cables were all tangled up in the
sand under or behind us. The stag¬
ing of it was horribly uncomfortable.

I imagine it was choreographed by
a gynecologist. All I could see was a
small pan of her back. It was about
as far from sexy as you can get.”

The other distinction of TAN¬
YA’S ISLAND was that the actors,
including McCleod, had to do their
own stunts. In the course of the film
Blue is: hung; hit over the head
many times (for real) by rocks or a
wooden pole; chased over fragile
diffside rock formations; imprison¬
ed by a falling 600 pound cage that
(luckily) landed where it was sup¬
posed to (as did McCleod); and
shot with an arrow. In the latter
stunt, the arrow penetrated not onlv
the suit, but a wooden shield pad
inside the suit, leaving McCleod
with a small scar to remember the
film by.

Don McCleod and Rob Bottin
aren’t kidding when thev sav: We
surv ived TANYA’S ISLAND! □

The ALIEN issue (9:11 was reallva iupper
Your coverage of the Dan Q'Banuon/
Waller Hill controversy cleared up a lot
of questions that were only fogged over
hv almost every other magazine I have
come to expect the whole storv from
CINFFANTASTIQUF and as usual, von
came through.

DAVID MATTINGLY
Burbank CA 91 506

In the sections where the various drafts
of the ALIEN script are compared to see
who contributed what. (9:1:15| one as¬
pect is never addressed: that O'Bannon
was involved in a final rewrite after Giler
had left the production’and before the
filming began See enclosed O’Bannon
interview that I published m the RBCC
Also, m an interview in Fantastic Films
O'Bannon states that when Ridley Scott
came in he was shown O’Bannon*s ver¬
sion of the script which he liked better
than Giler/H ill's version. Neither of these
points are addressed Regarding the fiasco
involving computer printouts in the film,
I attended an earlv screening of ALIEN
on Mas 7th and sat with Dan O'Bannon.
and when the computer printout scene
came on he mentioned that this was a
redone version because the people who
were origmallv supposed to do it had not
known what thev were doing and had
botched the job. Regarding the Guild
arbitration. I find it incredible that a
writer would accuse the Guild of not
knowing anvthmg about writing. In Star¬
ing Hill stated that for a writer to have his
name on the credits, he has to prove that
75^i of the script was his la fact vou left
out . so it's clear that Giler and Hill
couldn't even prove 75‘4. between them,
whereas O'Bannon could.

I'm reals getting tired of all this shit
getting dumped on Dan O’Bannon. If
someone isn't claiming Ridlev Scott is
the only reason for the film's success,
then they’re claiming that all the good
pans of the scrijit were w ritten by some¬
one else. Ridlev Scott was irnjmnant to
the film, without a doubt During the
screening I mentioned above, Dan ap-
jtlauded when Scott’s name appeared on
the screen. I think it was clear that vour
w riters believed Hill and Giler and either
didn't want to jiress these points, or else
hadn't done their homework and didn’t
know about them. In either case. Dan
O'Bannon was given the* hack of the
hand hv vour magazine, and whom was
served by that.-* Both the interview I
published with Dan. and mv meeting
him, did not bear out your image of him
being a selfish, grasping jK*rsonalitv.

JAMES VAN HISE. Editor. RBCC
San Diego CA 92126

|Dan O'Bannon knous better than anyone that
It alter Hill anti David C,tin's rruarking of his
screenplay constitutes substantial, creditable
alteration. Rut i certainIs had no desire to "give

continued page 36, column 4

Rob Bottin trorks on the beast's undnskull.

35

THE BLACK HOLE

Executwe producer Ron Miller,
served In a sentry robot at the wrap
party for THE BLACK HOLE.

continued from page 7

those ideas, because of any ego
problems I might be having. It was
a good working relationship.

Robert Fonter was an interesting
choice for the role of Holland, the com¬
mander Except for fus work in MEDIUM
COOL REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN
EYE and a few other roles. I don’t think
he’s ever been fully utilized in a part that
suits his talents.

No, he hasn’t. He’s an actor of
great depth. Unfortunately, his part
in THE BLACK HOLE does not
have great depth. That’s not to say
that the pan is a cardboard cut-out.
But he is the commander of the
mission. And therefore he has to
have strength. He has to have hon-
orability And he has to be a leader.
And he has all those qualities in his
character. I w ish the characters had
been a bit deeper, but I think we’ve
probed as deeplv into the charac¬
ters as anv film of this nature should
do. On a film like THE BLACK
HOLE, vou're not doing in-depth
character studies anyway.

l et ’s concentrate on the film ’s special
effects, which are impossible to ignore
anyway

I know | laughs).

Had you any real background in
effects work before you became involved
with THE RIACK HOLE*

No. I'd turned a couple of cars
over |laughs). But seriously, who
the hell has a background in effects
work before they actually get into
it, except for people like Eustace
Lvcctt and Art Cruickshank, who
are in key positions on this film?
That’s their life- They do nothing
but effects work. But. up to now.
I’ve never been classified an effects
director.

At this point, how much total produc¬
tion time has been given over to working
out the effects *

About a year and a half.

That sounds like a long time! Were
there any specific sequences that gave you
a headache*

Well, nothing was impossible to
shoot But some of the sequences—
especially the wire work, which was
tricky at best, putting actors on
wires—were dangerous in terms of
the safety’ of the performers. Thank¬
fully, thev were agreeable to getting
up on wires. As a matter of fact,
Yvette Mimieux, Ernest Borgnine
and Joseph Bottoms got to love the
wires, and looked forward to work¬
ing with them.

How long were you involved with the
wire work*

We were shooting wire stunts
for 40 or 50 days. It’s scattered
throughout the picture. The whole
first part of the film is in zero
gravity, onboard the Palomino
The set of that ship is relatively small
compared to the later interiors on
the Cygnus. so a lot of tight wire
work was done there. Really, it was
verv delicate wire work, all in an
area that permitted absolutely no
great, wild moves. Danny Lee. our
mechanical effects supervisor, was
an incredible help on tha».

To what extent are you actually
directing the effects* For instance, have
you been able to exercise your own crea¬
tivity in photographing the miniatures, an
area that is essentially Art Crutckshank’s
realm of expertise.

An is an incredible talent. Like
all other members of the team, he is
equally responsible for the high
quality of this entire project. But to
answer vour question. I think that,
in terms of photographing minia¬
tures, I trv to be as inventive and
creative as I can be within the limits
of what we’re working with in both
the storv and hardware.

Do you work with Peter Ellenshaw in
storyboarding all the angles used in shoot¬
ing the miniatures*

Oh ves. Peter and I work verv
closely together.

W hat aspect ratio are you using on
THE BLACK HOLE*

Well, first, we’re using Eastman
5254 stock. And it’s being shot in
35mm, but with a 70mm aspect
ratio. In other words, the picture
will go out as widescreen 70mm.
There will be a number of prints on
70mm. but for the most part it’ll go
out as 35mm with a squeeze on it.
Just like STAR WARS and CLOSE
ENCOUNTERS. Thev were both
shot in 35mm but were projected in
70mm.

Bv the way. another technical
aspect that I’m excited about is our
soundtrack. We’ll be using Dolby,
of course, but it also looks like we'll
be using digital sound, which is the
verv latest innovation. Now this
digital soundtrack idea hasn’t been
firmed up yet, but it’s [composer)
John Barn’s hope and ours that it
will work out in our favor.

The secrecy shrouding the climax of
THE RIACK HOLE is still very tight
Could this be because it hasn’t been
finalized yet *

No. It is all worked out. The
ending has been with us quite a
long time. It just hasn’t, as of July
1979, reallv been attac ked vet. We
have not photographed anything
from the ending yet, other than
what has been involved with the
principals and a few miniature
shots of the Probe Ship. But we’re
about ready to begin bearing down
on the last lap.

You know, vour question brings
us to a slight problem that I’m
having. There’s a slight problem of
coordination now, simply because
we are getting down towards the
end. and there’s so much work
being done optically, that we have
to put our priorities into perspec¬
tive. Some of the things that have
been done and put together need to

be redone. The question is, do we
redo the ones we know have to be
redone, or do we continue on with
the things that we now need in
hopes that they’ll be good, and then
go back to the redo’s later? So at the
moment it’s a matter of priorities.
Gel the picture done, then go back
and refine and clean up all the
problems.

Directors at Disney have traditional¬
ly been rather faceless in comparison to
the overall image which a Disney produc¬
tion usually promotes Does that fact give
you any pause*

Well, vou see, nobody sees Dis¬
ney films. Except the people. And
there’s the critical link. Certainly
no one in this business sees Disney
films or. if they do, they at least
don’t admit to having seen them. In
terms of the entertainment busi¬
ness, vou can come to Disney as a
creative individual and disappear. I
mean. Zanuck and Brown certainly
aren’t going to sit down and screen
THE APPLE DUMPLING GANG.
Which is unfortunate. But there are
also certain rewards to doing Disney
films. I feel that the one Disnevfilm
I did. EREAKY FRIDAY, was worth
being proud of, and I am proud of
it. For what it is, I think it’s a verv
good film. And it certainly doesn’t
hurt w hen you make a winner, too.
When I talk about a winner I mean
a picture that makes money for the
studio

Ry the mere fact that THE BLACK
HOLE is a large scale science fiction film,
met liable allusions will arise between it
and STAR WARS and CLOSE EN-
COl'STERS Do you really think there
are any comparisons between them*

I don’t. But hopefully, we will
get compared to them. I think that
technically, creatively and aesthet¬
ically we can match those films. We
have a different story, so therefore
and therein lies the big difference.
THE. BLACK HOLE will certainly
be a different film.

But Christ, for that matter we
hope that STAR TREK - TH F MO¬
TION PICTURE will do well. We
hope that every picture made will
do well. I mean, that’s why we make
films. I’m gonna get philosophical.
Films are made for people to see
and for people to enjoy, and to
generate money to come back into
the studios or to certain individuals,
so that more films can be made. So
naturally, we’re hoping that THE
BLACK HOLE will be successful.
Because if—and it’s a strong "if’
since I think we will be successful—
but if THE BLACK HOLE or anv
other film is not successful, it makes
it just that much harder to do the
next one.

Just what kind of picture is THE
BLACK HOLE going to be*

We are attempting, basically, a
straight-out action adventure storv,
with some humor stirred in. And I
think it succeeds very well, on a verv
high level as an adventure storv.
Hopefully there will also be a bit of
mvsterv in it, and the audience
won’t be so far ahead of you that
they'll have everything solved right
through to the climax. Let’s hope
that we succeed on a grand scale.
But then, that’s the final question,
isn’t it?

rontinurd from page 35
O’Hannon the back of the hand" or to foster an
image of him as selfish or grasping I can well
understand his rationale for feeling deserted of
sole screen credit, in the light of Fox's initial
recommendation that he receive “story by"
credit only .My main concern in writing a
“mini-history" of the screenplay to ALIEN was
in getting at the truth of the matter, truth is not
sen ed very well by the screen credits on
ALIEN’s release prints

I must admit l was unauare of any final
script prepared by O'Bannon and Rullry Scott
at the eleventh hour Neither Walter Hill nor
Rullry Scott mentioned this script, and both
Scott and associate producer Ivor Powell have
declined to comment on it uhen questioned
recently. Rut its existence does not alter the
changes arui imptoi rments made by Hdl-Giler
which found their way to the screen intact but
unrecognized In the inten teu you published
with O'Bannon he claims this final rewrite was.
and I quote, "maybe SOX of what the original
draft was What we got on the screen was
actually very close to the original draft "Having
read both the anginal draft of which O'Rannon
speaks, as well as the Hdl-Giler reu nte. I must
say that in my opinion his claims are simply
untrue Perhaps O'Bannon is simply confused
on this point, as he seems tobeoi er who actually
directed DARK STAR

It is indeed true that Guild rules stipulate a
u nter pen 7S% of a senpt to receive screen
credit, bear in mind that this rule applies to sole
screen credit only Nowhere in my article do / or
any of the pnnnpals state that Htll-Giler wrote
7S% of ALIEN or that they alone desen e a
u nting credit I'm afraid you miss the point of
the piece completely / clearly stated it Three
people are responsible for the smpt Rulley Scott
put before the cameras Facts are fads regardless
of any lop-sided ruling by the W G A

Mark Patrick C.arducci |

I know that Fred Olrn Rav has been
busilv hacking out low-budgrt mdir fea¬
tures for as long as I’ve known him. and
perhaps he feels like he’s in a small
position of authority to speak up about
the independent film world, but it cer-
rontinued page 38, column 4

CLASSIFIED ADS

Ads are S 50 per word, caps are S 20 extra
per word, payable In advance

Posters, stills, him. science fiction, hor¬
ror, fantasy Freelist JerryOhlmger'sMovie
Material Store Inc.. 120 W 3rd St. New York
NY 10012.(212)674-8474 Open every day
1-0 PM. Ind Subway West. 4th Street stop

Selling Comics. TV Avengers. Patrick Me*
Goohan. TV Guides. Doc Savage items. Pulps.
Playboys. James Bond. Monster. Space and
Movie Magazines. Movie Pressbooks. Pos¬
ters. Lobby Cards. Photos. Books, etc 1900
— 1979. Catalogues. 75C. to Rogofsky. Box
CF1102. Flushing NY 11354

THE JAPANESE FANTASY FILM SOCIETY
(say sew-cyeh-tee) is dedicated to the appre¬
ciation of the entire spectrum of Far East fan¬
tasy and special-effects films, from Godzilla to
animated super-heroes A monthly newslet¬
ter. yearbook, still photos. Japanese books,
toys and more will be available to members
For further information please write JFFS,
PO Box 59163. Chicago IL 60645

COLOR AND BAW STILLS All horror, sci-fi
and fantasy subiects. silent through present.
Large selection original posters, pressbooks.
lobby cards Send want list with S A S E or
stop in our store Hollywood Silver Screen.
6727’i Hollywood Blvd. Hollywood CA90028
Call 213-463-1792

Soundtrack. Original Cast LP's Large free
catalog STAR 277. Box 7. Ouarryville PA
17566

RARE SCIENCE FICTION Movie Material.
Pulps. Original Art. Comics, more Hundreds
of items pictured, described in Monthly Auc¬
tion Catalogue Si 00 for current issue Col¬
lectors Showcase. 6763 Hollywood Blvd .
Hollywood CA 90028

MOVIE MATERIAL—Time Machine to Alien
-We Have It All—Movie Posters 1930 s To
1980—Send 50« for catalog-World Of Cin¬
ema. 488 Henley Ave. New Milford NJ 07646

36

Mart land Street is a small cul-
de-sac in North Hollywood, just off
Tijunga. It’s an industrial district,
with such prosaic tenants as ABC
Diaper Service, Frazier Aviation,
Scraper Rings Co., and Lucas (!)
Machinery. At the end of the cul-
de-sac sits a vast one-story building
with no identifying signs other than
small warnings near the parking
zone that read “Restricted Parking
Universal Only.” This is Universal’s
Hartland Facility, the workshop that
shot BATTLESTAR CALACTICA
into orbit last year, and now works
long hours trving to keep BUCK
ROGERS aloft.

The plant, like most things in
Hollywood, has a peculiar and flukv
history. Wayne Smith and David
Garber, two designers who had en¬
tered the special effects Field through
the side door (working on Douglas
Trumbull’s Super-70 process) were
hired by Andrew Fennedy for his
proposed BUCK ROGERS TV series.
Models got built and designs were
drawn up. but the network balked
at the script. Garber and Smith shut
down their facility in Marina del
Rev, and laid off the crew. Three
months later, Leslie Stevens and
Glen Larson revitilized BUCK as a
proposed TV pilot, and work started
back up. Simultaneously, John Dvk-
stra and his crew began preparing
the effects for BATTLESTAR CAL¬
ACTICA at his own facility. Since
both films were Universal produc¬
tions, and the leases on both FX
buildings were coming to an end.
Universal consolidated their effects
teams into a single location on
Hartland Street. After completing
the first GALACTICA. however.
Dvkstra withdrew from the project,
taking most of his crew (including
many STAR WARS alumni) and the
models for the show. “He sent the
models back, of course,” per Smith,
“but for a week we sat around in
forced inactivity.” With the mam¬
moth reigns of the Battlestar thrust
into the collective hands of Smith
and Garber. BL1CK ROGERS took
a back seat.

When the final GALACTICA
wrapped, work on BUCK ROGERS
resumed. Still planned as a TV
pilot, the film shows its video origins
in its photography (the brightlv-lit
action limited to the central pan of
the frame for TV cutoff) and overall
production values. A high-level de¬
cision was made half-way through
production to release BUCK as a
theatrical feature, and to emphasize
the tongue-in-cheek quality over
the more serious material. Wise¬
cracks were looped in. and some
scenes re-shot for large-screen ratio.
Ultimately, the effects were the best

by Ted Newsom

Top: Hartland’i finely detailed model of the
flagship Draconia, seen in the theatrical pilot
for the series. 2: Setting up the model for blue
screen motion control filming. 1: A time lapse
shot which illustrates both the camera move¬
ment {lefii and model motion (right i involved
during motion control photography. Bottom:
Exterior miniature of Sinaloa, an outer space
gambling casino seen in an early series episode.
Right: Wayne Smith and David Garber ride
astride one of the blue motion control pylons,
the heart of the Hartland operation.

pan of the film. (Where have we
heard that before?)

Hanland is now 99% devoted to
the BUCK ROGERS series, a fact
verified by a walk through the model
shop. Off to one side stands a 20”
tall, 6’ long section of a launch tube,
with a mylar base covered with
vacuformed plastic designs. Neon
tubing will be added later, and the
section will be joined together with
a half-dozen others, then shot in a
continuous loop for back projection
plates. The concept is nearly identi¬
cal to the launch tube in GALAC¬
TICA, but according to Smith, the
BtTCK team came up with the idea
simultaneously with Dvkstra’s team.
Since GALACTICA reached the
screens first, the launch tube in
BUCK therefore seems derivative.

The 15” model of Buck’s ship is
detailed dowm to the cockpit, which
boasts working LED control panels
and a plastic replica of Gil Gerard.
A floating city stands against the
wall. “Originally, this was supposed
to float over the surface of a planet,”
explains Vance Frederick, one of the
model-makers, “but that was back
when they really didn’t know what
they wanted for the show. They just
said, ‘Build a bunch of things and
we’ll see what we can use.’ Now it’s
going to be a city out in space, a
gambling casino, actually. We’ll add
to it with a matte painting, making
it wider and broader.” Across the
room sits a 30” plaster asteroid,
representing a 42 mile-in-diameter
enemy base. The model will be used
for long shots, while another stage
holds a blow-up of one section, a
deep stone trench leading to a half-
buried fortress. This larger miniature
will be shot with the motion-control
camera, to follow Buck’s fighter as
it swoops through at tree top— make
that rock top— level. Elsewhere on
the workbench lay remnents of AIR-
PORT *79 (“which we’d rather for¬
get,” comments a passing model-
maker) and various spaceship mod¬
els that, as vet, have not been pressed
into action.

Wavne Smith took us on a quick
tour of the plant, quick because his
time is highly in demand. His name
constandy squeaked from the pag¬
ing system, and various technicians
and artists would pause to speak
with him as we walked through the
studios.

A peek into the matte-painting
department revealed a painted dup-
continued page 38, column 2

Wayne Smith & David Garber.

37

BUCK ROGERS IM M

Burroughs’ Mars Series
To Film At Columbia

Columbia Pictures producer David
Chasman has optioned the movie
rights to the Edgar Rice Burroughs
Mars series, including A Princess
of Mars, Warlord of Mars and The
Cods of Mars, all featuring swash¬
buckling adventurer John Carter.
Columbia also has first pass on Rav
Harry hausen’s projected SIN BAD
GOES TO MARS. It seems unlikely
that the studio will now back two
big-budget effects pictures that are
so similar, at the same time. There
has been speculation that the Har¬
rvhausen Sinhad project was merely
a code name for a Burroughs Mars
saga featuring John Carter, a ploy
l>eing used until the rights were
tied-up. When asked about this by a
close associate. Harrvhausen’s only
comment was “Funny how these
rumors get started, isn’t it?" David
Chasman, who acquired the rights
for Columbia from the Burroughs
estate, firmly denied any connec¬
tion with the Harrvhausen project,
but declined to comment further.
Coincidentally. Harrvhausen has
stopped preparations on SIN BAD
COES TO MARS, work which he
had taken on with some urgency'
and with a great deal of hardship
during the actual filming of CLASH
OF THE TITANS. Speculation is
that Columbia has turned-down
the Harry hausen Mars project and
plans to proceed with ajohn Carter
film on their own.

continued from page 37
licate of the floating city model, an
enemy air-base in the desert being
shot, and artists working on paint¬
ings for BUCK (an Escher-like ceil¬
ing) and MAXWELL SMART (an
Alpine lodge). Masonite is used as
the “canvas" because of the flat,
smooth surface that doesn’t need a
lot of prepping; glass is only used
when a backlit shot is called for.
necessitating scraping away some
sections of the painting.

Miniature asteroids covered most
of another soundstage. hanging from
a framework in front of a black
backing which itself was covered
with smaller brown rocks. The varv-
ing sizes and illusion of depth give a
good idea of a planetoid Sargasso
Sea, even in the unflattering flores-
cent light of the studio. Beside the
asteriod belt, an enemy fighter-
rocket sat canted in a 30° arc.
Cables ran from the model to a
nearby electronic setup, to which
an effects camera was also attached.

While waiting in Garber’s office.
I glanced through the ninetv-page
treatment of C HILD HOO D’S F. N D
by Phil DeCuerre, and even in the
abbreviated, short-hand style typi-
cal of a screen adaptation, the plot
and characterizations remain re¬
markably close to Clarke’s original.
Whether DeCuerre can maintain
the poetic images and ideas of the
storv throughout endless rewrites
and ultimately put them on film,
remains to be seen. Tacked to the
wall behind Smith is a pen-and-ink

sketch of an Overlord for the film:
cloven feet, goat’s-legs, and high,
ribbed wings. “It’s being budgeted."
says Smith. There’s talk that it may
go feature. But it’s still at a very
exploratory stage. Nothing is firm
either way. Right now I think they’re
budgeting between fifteen to twenty
million, but it’s all up in the air."

An informal discussion with a
few of the crew at the Hart land
Facility showed enthusiasm for their
work, but not particularly for BUCK
ROGERS. When I pulled out a pan
of the show from the L. A. Times it
provoked roars of laughter, pro
and con. The designers, model-
makers. and painters at Hartland
are among the best presently work¬
ing in town, but they realize, as
does Wayne Smith, that a television
show (or feature) cannot rely on its
effects. “I caught Gil Gerard on a
late-night talk show," remembered
one crew member, "and he said the
show is supposed to be ‘Burt Rey¬
nolds in Space.’ And taken that
way, it works."

That evening, hours later and
miles away, we happened to run
into one of the supporting players
from BUCK ROGERS in a cocktail
lounge on Ventura Boulevard. When
we asked for an opinion of the
show, the actor shook his/her head,
giving us an indulgent smile and a
thumbs-down gesture.

Wayne Smith, when asked his
opinion of BUCK ROGERS com¬
mented diplomatically, “I haven’t
seen the show." □

continued from page 36
tainly doesn’t give him a license lo as¬
sume fac ts ami figures alxnit other film
endeavors, as you've allowed him to do
about ALIEN f ACTOR |9:l:46|

First of all. Fred has never even seen
ALIEN FACTOR, vet he is quick to call
us quality "inferior." He also states that
we could not find a distributor, which is
not true; we had two distributors who
would have happilv taken the film, but
thev wanted "all rights" for a mere
$10.000 advance. We nixed those deals
to go with Gold Kev Iwcause, despite
what Fred thinks, we received more than
$10,000 from them for TV and non-
theatrical nghts only That still left us
world-wide theatrical nghts. and although
it hasn't resulted in any definite deals,
there is still a far-eastern deal for which
we have a signed contract.

The real ku ker is Fred's rather sneaky
ploy of taking a bad example from the
Gold Kev package and treating it as
though it’s a typical representation. Why
didn't he point out that other films in the
pac kage*, besides ALIF'N FACTOR, in¬
clude such "bottom-of-the-barrrl (Tap¬
pers" (as Fred calls them) as DARK
STAR. THE FABULOUS WORL D OF
|ll ES VERNE. FIRST SPACESHIP ON
VENUS.and INVADERS FROM MARS?

Fred’s letter makes it prettv apparent
that he is taking c heap shots at us liecause
a) ALIEN FACTOR was a first feature
and was sold to TV', which is more than
most "first features" can boast; and b)
despite us "inferior quality," ALIEN
FACTOR is probably better than most of
the sleazy, exploitation films Fred has
put together in "7 vears" at it. even
though Fred’s pictures have probably
had five times the budget we had.

DON DOHLF.R
Baltimore MD 21236

Who m the hell is responsible for that
smarmy example of reckless journalism
that appeared in the current CFQ on
New World Picture’s BATTLE BEYOND
TH F STARS? |9:11 The piece is so filled
with supposition and misinformation, it
never deserved to see the light of print.

The facts are that a dynamite effects
team has Iwen assembled and working
for the past five months creating what
promises to be some of the handsomest
model work to be seen on-screen. The
crew includes Robert and Dennis Skotak
with whom I am quite close, and have
personalis observed this production de¬
velop. Further, no director has even
lx*rn directly approac hed relative to the
direction of this film, let alone turn it
down.

Your comments and innuendo that
the film is "bargain basement" seems to
me to indicate an apology is in order to
the production office and the entire
effects team.

SCOT W HOLTON
Los Angeles CA 9004 H

|Our information tame from tu o reliable and
well informed sources at New World Picturei,
who are no longer associated with the company
The information u ai passed on in an even-
tempered manner houeirr. and not m spite Fur¬
ther corroboration was supplied by a key techni¬
cal person, who also says he ox erheard t'.orman
on the phone insulin# the effects on the film
could arui possibly should> be done for a total of
$ *>()(), that the person who u til be operating the
optical printer on the film willjust have to learn
how as he goes along, etc. What is the upshot of
all this> We don't know —perhaps t.orman
enjoy i putting people on But the more you knou
about New World’s poverty rotv mentality, and
the product they are now attempting to market
i which makes you wonder how they can stay in
business at alii, the more plausible such reports
seem. If any further evidence of the New World
modus operandi u required, we suggest % look
at Michael (ioodwm's article in the October
Penthouse Patrick Hobby]

DirectorJcannot Szwarc wraps Richard Matheson’s SOMEWHERE IN TIME.

"It is a pure romantic fantasy,
and the most unusual film this
town has seen in a long time.’’
Director Jcannot Szwarc is of course
referring to bis film adaptation of
Richard Matbeson’s Bid Time Re¬
turn. now in the process of being
edited at Universal. Many observers
are predicting that SOMEWHERE
IN TIME will turn out to be a
strong and highly favorable surprise.
The studio, well aware that a special
film requires special handling, is
taking its time in carefully planning
for a release that will not be set
Indore late spring, at the very earliest.

"The way it happened," said
Szwarc, "was that I bad just finished
JAWS II. and was getting a lot of
offers. Rav Stark called me in lor a
meeting. He bad this big. big pro¬
ject-kind of a space opera—and

tii/Aor Hu hard Mathcson’s cameo role.

be wanted to get me involved in it. 1
told him it was not that I wasn’t
interested, but that I didn’t want to
do another huge pic ture (right) after
JAWS II. He asked me what I was
looking for. and I said a romantic
fantasy— something like PORTRAIT
OFJFN NIE or THF. GHOST AND
MRS. MUIR. Stephen Deutsch was
handling business affairs for Stark’s
company. He practically jumped in
the air, and said thev had this book
by Richard Mathcson. but no one
bad clicked to it yet. I read it that
night, and called back the next
morning to say I wanted this to be
mv next project." Deutsch was the
one who bad first indicated an
interest in the book to Matheson,
and three years later it became his
first opportunity to produce.

"It was not any easy picture to
get off the ground." commented
Szwarc. "Verna Fields liked the pro¬
ject avid was very supportive, but it
was not something the studio could
readilv understand. We wanted to
get a go-ahead without a cast. We
did. but we had to make it for a
price. Then, getting Chris Reeve
was a big break for us."

Reeve was initially attracted to
the project for reasons that went
beyond his liking the material or
his career-oriented desire to estab¬
lish some quick distance between
himself and SUPERMAN. Taking
risks is something he relishes rather
than avoids, and this story clearly
!x*longed to a genre that is perhaps
the most difficult to bring off well.
Reeve’s character in the film is also

the focal point for necessary changes
in adapting the novel for the screen.
Gone is the character’s terminal
illness (“It would become one of
those movie diseases." says Szwarc,
"where vou never know what the
person has. We didn’t want that
emphasis."), replaced by a vague
dissatisfaction with his present life,
and a quest after something he
can’t quite define, sparked by the
haunting image in a painting, of a
beautiful actress from the early pan
of this century. According to Szwarc,
earlier indications that the book’s
fantasy element would be toned
down on film are erroneous. The
fantasy is implicit in the premise,
rather than needing to be stressed
in an overly oven fashion. Remarks
the director, “I have never liked
time travel with machines." Reeve’s
time-tripping will be via intense
concentration (!)—a supreme act of
the will. Odd as this might sound, it
is said to have been captured con¬
vincingly on film.

Richard Matheson. also the au¬
thor of the script, was present on
Mackinac Island locations all during
filming. Such an event is extremely
rare for Hollywood filmmaking,
but indicative of the w'av Szwarc
prefers to work. In his view there
was no one more qualified to handle*
any of the polishing or revision that
inevitably crops up during actual
production. For his part, Matheson
reported this by far the best film
experience of his career. So much
so, in fact, that he was induced to
take a small role himself.

38

It has no connection with a
hook of the same name bv British
novelist James Herbert, first pub¬
lished in 1975 (though he knows of
it). It’s not related to THE TROL-
LENBERG TERROR, a.k.a. THE
CRAWLING EYE (though he ad¬
mits to liking the first V\ of this
vintage 1950’s flick). No, John Car¬
penter's THE FOG is a ghost story'.

The film will open with John
Houseman, as a grizzled old fisher¬
man. telling a shudders’ story to a
group of children seated around an
evening campfire. Bv extension, we
are the children, and the story is for
our benefit. Over one hundred years
ago. a sailing ship was lost with all
hands, right off this same stretch of
Northern California coastline. The
ship was lured to disaster by a
campfire on the beach, much like
this one. which, viewed through a
boil of mist and fog. was mistaken
for sign of a lighthouse nearby. The
drowning seamen swore an oath of
vengeance against this coastal town.
One day. Houseman warns the chil¬
dren, they will rise up from the
briny deeps, still covered with sea¬
weed. and they will get you!

“Where this comes from,” Car¬
penter recalls, "is that when I was in
England, several years ago. I took a
drive out to see Stonehenge. There
was a tremendous mood to the
countryside. I looked across, and
there was this fog sitting there. It
was very visual, eerie, white, and
ghostly. I thought, ’what if some
dark shape just walked out of that
thing and started coming toward
me?’ I’d have gone right through
the roof of the car! . . . Imagine a
small town, w ith this fog bank drift¬
ing quietly across the road. Suddenly
it surrounds your house, and you
hear a knocking at the door. The
things you could do w ith that! . . .*'

THE FOG began shooting last
April on litle known Northern Cali¬
fornia locations. Producer Debra
Hill had researched all the light¬
houses along the California coast,
until she found one, on the majestic,
windswept Point Reyes peninsula,
that would well serve the storv. It
was only half as tall as she had
hoped, but the area was perfect in
every other respect, boasting such
scenic values as a thirty-storv stair¬
case snaking its way down the rugged
hillsides to the lighthouse. Point
Reyes is in the second foggiest zone
to lie found in the U.S., but when it
is clear out, one can see for appar¬
ently endless miles, without even a
telephone pole to disturb the nat¬
ural splendor. Best of all was the
nearby town of Inverness, set amidst
terrain reminiscent of Scotland.

In making the film Carpenter
still enjoyed the creative control of
independent production, but this
time, also some new* luxuries: a

by Jordan R. Fox

Scenes from John Carpenter's THE FOG. to be
released by Avco-Embassy Pictures early next
year. Top & Bottom: The ghostly inhabitants
of "the fog' take on a tangible and threatening
physical form in the film. Middle: John House¬
man. as a grizzled old seafarer, opens the film
by telling the fearful legend of "the fog" to
children gathered 'round his campfire at night.

John Carpenter, director.

budget several times that of HAL¬
LOWEEN (“more that $1 million,
but not or 3") to pay for: a longer
shooting schedule; a larger, more
impressive cast, including, in addi¬
tion to Houseman, Hal Holbrook,
Janet Leigh, and Adrienne Barheau;
and a substantial amount ofoptieals
and sound effects. The script pre¬
sents the fog as a quasi-living entity,
lit by its own inner glow. Behaving
in a purposeful manner utterly un¬
like any form of the natural sub¬
stance, the fog is also the preferred
mode of travel for the murderous
seamen. There is no escaping THE
FOG; it can even seep around the
corners of a window pane. And its
evil inhabitants, ghosts though they
may be, have enough solid physi¬
cal i tv to knock the door of a vault
off its hinges. So what chance do
ordinary people like Adrienne Bar-
beau. plaving the owner/operator
ol a local radio station, have against
such a threat? We will have to wait
until next Januarv to find out.

Carpenter calls THE FOG a
departure from his past work.
“There’s less violence; it’s less overt,
more in the mind. I’m reiving on
parallel cutting rather than a lot of
camera movement. And we don’t
need cattle-prod shocks here. Mood
and story will carry it.” Too, he feels
that getting realistic performances
from his cast nicely counterbalances
the fantasy elements. Coaching a
performance from the various kinds
of fog seen in the film, natural and
man made, was another matter. For
outdoor use they preferred fog ma¬
chines working on a mineral oil
solution, but this left them at the
mercy of the winds. This is one
reason, says Carpenter, that THE
FOG required more set-ups, and
used up more footage, than anvthing
he has ever been involved with
before. Indoors, they found dry ice
far more tractable, as it w ill obliging¬
ly follow another cold source.

Carpenter’s name has been sur¬
facing in connection with a number
of projects, including Univeral's re¬
make of TH E THING, and Bryna’s
long dormant Bradburv adaptation
SOMETHING WICKED TH IS WAY
COMES, which Avco-Embassy is
negotiating for and has offered him
on the strength of his work in THE
FOG. Though oft-announced, he is
not committed to THE PROME¬
THEUS CRISIS and may bow-out
of that entirely. His next film will •
probably be EL DIABLO, a western,
keeping him busy well into 1981. □

39

THE FOG

“Paramount felt
that the ending
we were so
entranced with
might not be
commercially
viable. It can be
interpreted any
way you wish.
We persevered,
and fought, and
insisted, and we
got to keep the
ending. And still
we don’t know
who was right.
We’ll find out
in December.”

Harold

Livingston

ule with a tremendous amount of
work, to do. and that’s put a real bind
on the whole thing, hut everybody’s
working like mad—in some areas,
around the dock.”

Would it be safe to say that your coming
into the project upgraded it in many way s,
making it a more important film with a
bigger budget*

I would not like to have the whole
si/e of the budget attributed to my
coming into the picture, because it
has gotten to quite a tremendous
size But, sure, it had to be upgraded.
I think that would have happened
whether I or another theatrical film
director had come on, because they
had alreadv built x-number of sets
for what was initially started as a
revival of a TV series.

In that case, uhat changes can be
directly attributed to your participation on
the picture*

Rasicallv. I would think, the up¬
grading of the entire look of the
Enterprise interiors. The exterior w as
prettv much the same, with a few

i, 4

improvements they had made. The
bridge is certainly the same circular
bridge that they had built for the
show, but I upgraded all the instru¬
ment panels, the lighting, the floor¬
ing and all kinds of things. This was
done because 70mm and even 35mm
Panavision is very demanding, in
terms of detail and look, as compared
to the small TV screen. In the TV
show, I thought the corridors of the
Enterprise looked like the Holiday
Inn or some other motel corridors—
they were square, boxy-looking, so
we made new very striking looking
corridors. The engine room they had
built was not nearly satisfactory. The
people I brought in redesigned it and
came up with a tremendous improve¬
ment, using diminishing perspective
including the use of midgets in the
background —to make it look like it
goes on and on.

A nd the ceiling which was added to the
Enterprise bridge*

I think that was Harold Michel-
son’s design, but it was something we
felt was needed, the flexibility to

“We would ask
Paramount all
the time, ‘What
is our budget?’
To be creative,
you need some
parameters, and
then you can
figure out what
solutions are
possible. But
they kept saying
‘Whatever you
need, whatever
you want, you’ve
got it.”

Lee Cole

Left: An array of aligns,
used as "local color" in the
opening in San Francisco.

While "Star Trek” fans and Gulf
and Western stockholders anxiously
count down toward the December
7th world premiere of STAR TRF.K
-THE MOTION PICTt’RE. Para¬
mount’s post-production wheels are
spinning at warp speed. Activity on
this work-in-progress includes sound
looping, creation of the all-impor¬
tant visual effects, music composi¬
tion, and even re-shooting certain
portions of a kev sequence.

The eve of this cinematic hurri¬
cane is director Robert Wise, a multi¬
award-winner who is used to achiev¬
ing maximum results with minimum
of the egocentricitv and tempera¬
ment sometimes associated with his
profession. Quietly confident that the
film will be reads for its pre-Christ¬
mas plavdates. Wise acknowledges
that, in his words. “It’s going to be
verv tight. That’s because we did have
a setback in our special effects area, as
vou know, losing (Robert] Abel. For-
tunatelv, we were able to get Doug
Trumbull and John Dykstra They
were forced to start way behind sched¬

shoot from a low angle if wc wanted.
Usually, on TV, thev don't fool a-
round with ceilings, they usually put
the camera pretty straight on. A coup¬
le of other things are attributable to
me, including the Recreation Room.
When I came on the show. I saw a
number of the old episodes, and I
was struck with the fact that they were
always talking about having a crew of
four-hundred-sixty or something.
But all vou ever saw* were the main
characters and a few extras walking
around the back. They didn't have
any scope. So I felt it was very impor¬
tant that there be one place in the
picture where we would have a big
rec room and see a good part of the
four-hundred people in one group,
so we illustrate the size of The Enter¬
prise and that it’s manned by all these
people. As a result of my strong
feeling, we have a big, two-story rec
room with a matte painting on top.
Another place where we had that
opportunity to reveal the Enterprise’s
scope and size was in the cargo deck.

Almost never in the TV' show did
vou ever see earth, and I felt it was
vital to emphasize the scene in San
Francisco. When 1 first read the script,
that scene was fairly limited, but I felt
it was extremelv important, particu¬
larly since our story is supposed to
stan on eanh, be about the saving of
eanh, before we go up to the heavens
and never come back. So we got some
marvelous shots of the futuristic San
Francisco, and we gave Captain Kirk
a much more dynamic entrance by
restructuring that scene and having

him come in at a moment of conflict.
This gave him a sense of direction
and movement and a goal.

Of count, you must have effected many
other changes in the script

When I read the script, the major
difference from the old series was the
fact that there was no Spock in it.
From all I gather, Leonard had said
that he was not interested in doing
another series of “Star Trek" TV
shows. I had not been a trekkie, I was
not glued to the series when it first
came out, or when it went into syndi¬
cation, so I was not really aware of all
of its facets. And everybody I talked
to. including my wife and her daugh¬
ter and son-in-law, who are trekkies,
said, “You can’t possibly think about
doing ‘Star Trek’ without Spock. I
mean, that would be as bad as trying
to tell it without Kirk. It’s impossible,
it’s crazy to make the film without
him." So I came back to Paramount
and said, “People close to me and
others who followed the series think
that it’s absolutely idiotic to think of
making it without Spock. There must
be some way to get him." So, I was
one of those responsible for getting

“I think the fans who
didn’t want us to change
anything will feel that
we’ve only improved the
original in terms of the
look and feel of the thing.”
Robert Wise

Director Robert M ite and W illiam Shatner on the Enterprise bridge, betu een taker.

him on the picture.

For which a mass of "Star Trek" fans
will undoubtedly be grateful

After we had the press conference
which announced the picture, plus
the fact that everybody in the cast was
back together, and I would be direct¬
ing, I got a number of letters. It was
interesting how they broke down,
almost fifty-fifty divided. One half of
them said, “Don’t you dare touch a
thing, don't fool around with ‘Star
Trek,' leave it alone, just do it." And
the other half said “Thank God, now
it can be done right, now it can be
done properly." So, that’s what we
were faced w'ith, and I hope that
we’ve done the right thing. I think the
fans who didn’t want to change any¬
thing will feel that we’ve only improv¬
ed the original in terms of the look
and the feel of the thing. I believe that
the people who wanted it upgraded
will feel we did a proper job. We’ll
just have to see. . .

Speaking of improvements, is it true
that in recent weeks there have been some
retakesf

Yes, we rehot a scene we call the
space walk, involving Spock and Kirk
outside the Enterprise. We had al¬
ready shot about half of it, at some
considerable expense. It was just not
very' exciting, it wasn’t moving; we
were concerned about it. We had a lot
of it yet to shoot when Doug Trum¬
bull came on the show, so we talked
to him about it and he felt very' much
as we did. He had concerns about it,
so he came up with another approach
to doing the scene that would be
much simpler but much more effec¬
tive and visually exciting than the one
we had.

That’s what we’ve done. We elim¬
inated the original space walk and re¬
shot the sequence a couple of weeks
ago with Leonard and Bill. Doug was
with me, because he has to put effects
over this footage. In fan, he routined
the sequence, and then I put it on
film. Then we did long shots with the
doubles, and Doug shot blue screens
to go with them, and all that is
coming together in the new' space
walk, which will be three or four
minutes long, as compared to maybe
ten or twelve in the old one, and be
far more exciting.

What makes the difference ?

The original sequence was done
verv literally, w ith rather slow'-moving
space suits going past pieces of set.
The new one is going to be faster,
with Spock in a thruster suit that
propels him right into the center of
what he’s investigating. Images of
what he’s seeing are going to move by
very fast and be reflected in his face
mask. It’s going to be much faster,
more visually exciting, with visuals
that are done on the multiplane with
marvelous graphics work. It’ll be very'
exciting.

For over three decades, Harold
Livingston has written for television,
films (ESCAPE FROM MINDANAO.
THE SOUL OF NIGGER CHAR
LEY), and occasionally produced for
television, but he feels the most pride
in his work as a novelist. Of his seven
books, one. The Heroes Are All
Dead, was filmed in 1962 as THE
HELL WITH HEROES. Another,
which he wishes had been filmed.

and which won the Houghton M ifflin
Fellowship Award, was Coasts of the
Earth (yes, it sounds like science
fiction, but it isn’t—it’s about Ameri¬
can volunteers in the Israeli air force
in 1948).

As producer of the ill-fated STAR
TREK revival series. Livingston work¬
ed w'ith Gene Rtxldenberrv and w'riter
Alan Dean Foster on the development
of the storv— based on a Roddenberry
idea— for a two hour pilot. The result
was the basis for what is now STAR
TREK-THE MOTION PICTURE,
for which Livingston will receive solo
screenplay credit. The story for the
film originated as a tale called “Ro¬
bot’s Revenge" designed for Gene
Roddenberry’s short-lived GENESIS
II. Elements from STAR TREK epi¬
sodes “The Changeling" and “The
Doomsday Machine," dramatized in
a different form, can also be found in
the final script for ST-TMP.

Did you u<ork with Gene Roddenberry
on the rewritef

Gene Roddenberry and I worked
together very closely. I didn’t know-
enough about “Star Trek" to do the
“Star Trek"-isms, and I couldn’t fool
with them. I just didn’t have time.
Gene did that, and filled in all the
jargon. I had screened every episode
at a rate of about two a day, but I still
relied on Gene’s expertise and ex¬
perience. There were characters which
Gene had lived with all these years,
such as “Bones" McCoy, that I didn’t
know. There were characteristics, and
cadences, and attitudes in all these
people that Gene couldn’t help but
know’ more intimately than I did.

At the same time, were you able to bring
a fresh, more objective viewpoint to the
characters?

I felt that I wanted to make them
more mature. The television series
had been designed for a certain audi¬
ence, and it was on a level of mental¬
ity that didn’t particularly appeal to
me. I wanted to dimensionalize the
characters more. I wanted to give
Kirk flaws, weaknesses, human char¬
acteristics, and I think I succeeded in
that. And when you start writing him
that way, then every other character
must relate to him and to each other
on that basis, so you have character
growth, which makes an interesting
story for the viewer. Gene and I
debated this—he certainly had good
points—but basically I think he a-
greed with me. After all, a decade
later, our society has changed, and
Gene will now have a more sophisti¬
cated audience.

Did you u>ork as closely with the actors
as you did unth Roddenberry before shooting
started?

I worked with the actors before
and during shooting. We literally
wrote on the set. There were always
changes and transitions. The actors
were extremely helpful. I’ve never
met a crew that helped me this way.
As the story progressed—and we shot
it almost in sequence—they began to
feel more of the story. Then we ran
into some terrible obstacles, holes in
the story that had never worked, and
we had to work all that out. Particu¬
larly the ending, which was one of the
great betes noirs of all time. 0

I give full credit to the cast and
director, because nobody could have

done this picture alone. No one mind
could have conceived it, it’s too god¬
damned big. If anybody says, “This is
my picture,” that’s patently untrue. It
was a hundred percent collabora¬
tion. more than any show I’ve ever
worked on.

The one actor who I think contrib¬
uted the most to this project is Leon¬
ard Nimoy. He was very helpful.
Everybody was tired; this happens on
a picture. He came in and was a
breath of fresh air. He had notions,
concepts, ideas, he really bolstered
everybody up. Nimoy would come
over to my house after shooting at
nine o’clock every night. I’d give him
a drink, he’d sit in a chair, I would
type a scene and we d talk it out.

Because, we’d really gotten into
some serious problems of concept
and approach. We had almost writ¬
ten ourselves into a corner at one
point: we knew what the ending was,
and we had to direct the story toward
that ending. To reach that ending,
with what I call its clarity of ambi¬
guity, we had to set up situations and
characterizations all the way through
the story. With t he growth of the story
as it was being filmed, everything was
in constant state of flux. N uances and
ideas changed and had to be shoved
in with each sequence. But at the end.
there was a gigantic gap.

Like the farmer who builds a fence
around his property by cutting each pole to
match the one before it. and then discovers
that the last pole is a foot taller than the first
one he put in.

That’s what we had to bridge, yes.
And the studio displayed some ner¬
vousness now and then over the end¬
ing because thev wanted it differentlv.

Why’

Well, they felt that the ending we
were so entranced with might not be
commercially viable. What we wanted
was an ending that would send people
out of the theater saying, “Gee, I
know what they meant.” Or. “Do you
think they meant. . It’s clear what
happens, but the meaning is ambig¬
uous. You can interpret it any way
you wish. There are three or four
levels of approach, of perception, to
that ending. So, we persevered, and
fought, and insisted, and we got to
keep the ending.

And, we still don’t know who was
right. We’ll find out in December.

The man who shares star billing
with William Shatner and Leonard
Nimoy in STAR TREK-THE MO¬
TION PICTURE remembers the pro¬
ject when it might have more proper¬
ly been called “Star Trek—The Crazy
Idea.” Recalls DeForest Kelley, “It
was in the second year of our series. I
was having lunch in the old RKO
commissary with Gene Roddenberry
and Gregg Peters, our production
manager, and the three of us came up
with the idea of doing a motion
picture version of the snow during
the hiatus. That far back, we thought,
what a terrific thing that would be.
Had we done it, God knows what
might have been the result of it. It was
much later that 2001 and STAR
WARS came along. We were all a-
head of our time in the thinking, even
then.”

What prevented the idea from becoming

DeForeit Kelley as Dr. Ijvnard “ Bones" McCoy, chief medical officer of the Fnlerprue.

a reality sooner’

We kicked the idea about off and
on and then it was kicked out the
window: “Who would ever think of
making a motion picture out of a
television show?” But all we’ve done
is talk about it for years, and years.
And. as a result, naturally, it's had a
strong influence on all our lives.
Now, I look back and think. “God, a
year has gone by since we started
working on this film.” And it seems
to me impossible that it’s done and
completed. It seems to me, some¬
times, like a dream.

The fans, of course, had an enor¬
mous amount to do with it. They
never let go of it, as you know. It just
grew and grew. I remember going to
New York for a personal appearance
at what was only the second or third
“Star Trek” convention, and when I
walked out on the stage at the Ameri¬
cana Hotel, I had no idea of what I
was going to face. Well, there were
eight or nine thousand people there.

I stood waiting to speak while the fire
department was trying to clear the
aisles. They were saying, “Look, if
you don’t clear the aisles, there will
be no convention.” Nobody was
moving, so I finally said to them,
“Look, I want to talk to you, that's
why I’m here, and if you don’t abide
by these rules, we won’t be able to
communicate.” And, boy, like little
angels, they started clearing the aisles.
It was astounding to see that many
people, including those that were
turned away because they couldn’t
let them all in. You could feel the love
bouncing off of these people. It was
marvelous. That’s when I came back
to California and thought, “I don’t
know’ when, or how, but something
is going to happen with this show.” I
just had this feeling. And eventually,
of course, it did. It’s been an experi¬
ence for all of us, unlike any experi¬
ence. I believe, that any actor or
actress has ever gone through.

And now that shooting is completed,
screenwriter Harold Livingston credits you
and the other actors with being more helpful
than any other cast he has worked with.

This script was so involved, as I’m
sure Harold has told you, there was
no time for characterization to be de¬
veloped. I felt just as I had when we
first staned the series and I’d had to
fight for every moment of characteri¬
zation, even if it w’as only a look, a re¬
action. Bill, Leonard and myself, we
thought, “My God, we’ve got to get
the relationships going.” We kept
asking each other, “When is it going
to happen?’’ And it wasn’t happening.

It just meant conversations with
Harold and Gene and Bob, and say¬
ing, "Well, look, I don’t think McCoy
would do or say this particular thing
at this particular time." Harold would
say, “Well, what do you think he
would say?” I would tell him what I
would think, and he’d say, “ By God, I
think you’re right. Let me write some¬
thing, and I’ll send it over to the set,
and you see what you think about it.”
So, he’d knock out something, send it
over to the set, I would read it and call
him back on the phone and tell him
whether I thought it was right on the
nose, or, “Almost, but it still needs
this. . Which he would comply
with. Because sometimes he would
give me a line and it would be what

“Bill, Leonard and myself,
we thought, ‘My God, we
got to get the relationships
going.’ We kept asking
each other, ‘When is it
going to happen?’ And it
wasn’t happening.”

DeForest Kelley

Bones would say, but perhaps not the
way he would say it. I’d have to tell
him, "Harold, it’s just not the real

McCoy. .

Production designer Harold Mi-
chelson came to the field of an direc¬
tion after having been a storyboard
anist. His work as a production illus¬
trator includes THE BIRDS and
MARNIE, and he credits Alfred
Hitchcock with having taught him a
valuable lesson in telling a story on
film. “I brought him a storyboard,”
says Michelson, “and he said, ‘That’s
beautiful, but I can’t use it. It’s too
dramatic for this pan of the picture.’ I
was upset. At the time, I just thought
he w*as dead w’rong, but it turned out
he was dead right. A film is like a
symphony, and you’ve got to have
high points and low points. Ifyou put
in nothing but high points, you’ll just
tire the audience. You need those low
points to make your high points
stand out.”

Along with an director Leon Har-
ns, and an an depanment of about a
dozen talented individuals, Michelson

4 )

is responsible for the final look of the
STAR TREK settings, a task he inher¬
ited when Roben Wise undenook to
transform the TV pilot into an impor¬
tant theatrical feature.

What got you involved on the feature’

I was in Huntsville, Alabama,
working on a picture called THE
RAVAGERS. and a 747 flew over
with the Enterprise riding piggy¬
back. I ran out of my motel, and it
was kind of a thrill to see the space
shuttle flying overhead. I’ve never
been into science fiction, but actually
seeing it got me kind of excited. Now,
when you are on a movie company,
you get invited to places. They invited
us to see the space shuttle, so I went
on board the Enterprise and it was
really a thrill. I took a lot of pictures
and really got interested. Then, about
a week later, I got back to the motel
from work and I got a call saying,
"How would you like to do STAR
TREK?” I had just been on a real
shuttle, and now I was into it, so I
immediately said yes.

And you designed all the sets’

When I got to Paramount, the
Enterprise interiors had all been
built for the new TV series. But I met
with Bob Wise, and he said that he
would like the ship to be a very
special thing, which meant that I
could rip out the walls and really
change it. Before that, I had held to
the feeling that the walls went a
certain way and I had to do some¬
thing inside them. But now I could
take out the walls, twist them and

43

V

3

/ & 2) The new look of the U. S. S. Enterprise,
sleeker. more detailed, and self-illuminated—
there is no external light source in outer space. 3)
The space shuttle of Surak, a great Vulcan
leader. 4) Matte artist Matt Yuricich. putting
finishing brush strokes on his panoramic view of
the planet Vulcan. His finished composite of the
Rec Room, adding a painted-in ceiling, is seen
behind him. V Decker (Stephen Collins >. Kirk
(William Shatner), Spock tLeonard \imoy).
and McCoy (DeForest Kelley). come face to face
with V'ger. an au*esome power which threatens
the Federation. 6) Spock seeks guidance from a
master of mental discipline (Edna Glox>er) on
Vulcan. 7 & 81 Filming the Enterprise in dry

“My hope is that thfe
audience will see the film
and say, ‘Okay, that’s
three hundred years from
now. That’s nothing we
can do with our present
technology.’ 1 kept trying
to think of anything that
would give us a feeling of
three hundred years from

now. Michelson

dock using motion control camerau>ork. Doug
Trumbull and John Dykstra have divied-up the
film’s special effects work by mutual agreement,
based on the tyte of equipment and personnel
each had at'ailable or was about to acquire.
Trumbull has taken on the lion’s share of the
work because he has the bigger operation. Dykstra
is doing most of the miniature u>ork involved, on
the Magicam system. Trumbull and Dykstra
constantly coordinate their efforts, meeting every
feu* days to discuss their u<ork in progress and
what remains to be done, each taking on the
assignments necessary to meet the film's fast-
approaching December 7 release date. Rumors
abound that the film will not be ready on time.

turn them, mold the thing any way I
liked. Kirk’s quarters, for instance, I
made into two tubes, two rooms
separated by a sliding lucite door in
between. I kept the same square
footage, but that’s about all that was
left of the first design, it was now
entirely different. The corridors, of
course, are practically the same as
before, except all this aluminum and
lighting which we added.

You see, I thought to myself, “Ar¬
chitecture alone is not going to do it;
it’s going to have to be the lighting,
too, and I’m going to have to have the
cooperation of the cameraman.” He
was very cooperative. I built lights
into the set along the bottom of the
walls, so that the onscreen light
source came from below. Don’t ask
me why. It’s just a different feeling
than having the lights coming from
above. It gave the set a different look:
the floor was aglow.

I added certain platforms made
out of grillwork. What I wanted with
this railing was a feeling of floating,
that nothing was necessarily anchor¬
ed to the ground. We covered certain
lights underneath the grilled walk-
wav so that when they were lit, the
shadow which you’re used to seeing
was eliminated. It looked as if there
was nothing holding up the walkway.
My hope is that the audience will see
that and say, “Okay, that’s three hun¬
dred vears from now. That’s nothing
that we can do today with our present
technology.” I kept trying to think of
anything that would give us a feeling
of three hundred years from now.

Were you alone responsible for coming
up ti lth ideas t

The floating platforms were just

one idea of many that we used, and
they didn’t all come from me. A lot of
times, Leon Harris, the an director,
had very good ideas—which I just
took. It’s a community efTon, and
you can pick up ideas from all over,
from the set designers, and the sketch
anists. . .1 take them from every¬
body.

Which is. after all why you have an art
department under you on a picture of thu
magnitude.

That’s my thought. They’re full of
talented people, why not use them?
Take Lee Cole, for instance. She was
invaluable in laying out the instru¬
ments and the graphics, which was
an unbelievable feat, and nobody
will ever really know. I mean, every
instrument on that ship meant some¬
thing, and did something, because
Roddenberry is a stickler for that.
They were not just blinking lights—
they all worked, and they were mar¬
velous.

At the conclusion of a drama in
the recent NBC-TV anthology WHAT
REALLY HAPPENED TO THE
CLASS OF ‘65?, a Vietnam war vet¬
eran who has deserted his wife and
son returns to the fold and, as a
gesture of affection for his son, gives
the boy a toy model of the starship
Enterprise, the space vessel used to
be navigated by the man who wrote
the episode: Walter Koenig. His script
so impressed actress Meredith Baxter
Bimev, who played the young moth¬
er, that she was instrumental in Koe¬
nig’s being assigned to write for her

own series, FAMILY.

In fan, writing is but one of the
new directions in which Koenig has
blossomed since STAR TREK left the
network. He has also directed and
produced for the stage, and he teaches
at California School of Professional
Psychology, UCLA and at Sherwood
Oaks Experimental College. All this
brain work must seem a little ironic
to Koenig, who, as Pavel Chekhov,
created a character noted for his
impulsiveness and youthful swagger.

The Chekhov character was originally
brought into the series to represent the
"youth element "He’s now ten years older
Has the film permitted you to age his
character accordingly f

It’s almost an academic question,
as there wasn’t enough character stuff
for Chekhov in the storv to make any
difference in his age. I had consider¬
ed that possibility, what would I do to
change the character should the op¬
portunity arise in terms of dialogue. I
opted for keeping him fairly much
the way he was, simply because that
was the only way we had established
Chekhov: brash, cocky, full of life,
and so on. If I were now to make him

“I’m no longer navigator.

I’m now the head of
weaponry. So instead of
saying, ‘Warp factor four,’
I say ‘Torpedoes away!”
Walter Koenig

Walter Koenig as Ensign Pavel Chekhov, promoted in rank, but still in the background

a sober, military type who’s married
to his job, then we’d be going from
something to nothing. If the oppor¬
tunity’ had been there, I would have
continued to play him along some¬
what the same lines.

But the opportunity wasn’t there?

No, it wasn’t. That isn’t to say, I
hastily add. that I did not enjoy
myself, or that I’m disappointed in
my participation—well, I am a little
dissapointed— but I would not have
missed the opportunity, regardless.
Certainly it’s true that Nichelle [Nich¬
ols, Uhura), George [Takei, Suluj and
I were there just to lead the story
along. I had a different function on
the ship in the series; I’m no longer
navigator, I’m now the head of weap¬
onry’. So instead of saying, “Warp
Factor Four,” I say, “Torpedos away.’’

I did get to see some footage the
other day while I was looping, and
there was one moment that has been
retained, and, I must say so myself,
it’s rather amusing. We’re being in¬
vaded, something is approaching me,
and somebody says, “Chekhov, don’t
move!’’ And i’m sitting there, abso¬
lutely terrified, and I say, “Absolute¬
ly, I won’t move!’’ And it works very
well. That’s about as close to a char¬
acter line as I’ve got in the entire film.

Why do you think you wouldn’t have
missed the opportunityf Would you have
perhaps felt left out if you hadn’t joined this
reunion of the STAR TREK family ?

l think you could probably start
with that as one reason and go up to
twenty more. I’ve written a book, a
daily journal of the making of the
film, which is going to be published,
but someday I’m going to write an
article regarding the pull this show
has had on me, from every aspect:
not only the creative, but also the
emotional, the psychological, the
neurotic. It would be about the fact
that I do not have the strength of
character to turn my back on it and
say, “Well, that’s a pan of my life
that’s over, and now, let me go onto
something else.’’ I do go on to other
things. I write, I teach, I direct, but
I’ve always left room for STAR TREK
in my life. And, although I think
some of the reasons are positive,
some of them are less than positive.

STAR TREK has been easy. You
go on the set, you make a consider¬
able amount of money doing very
litde. But for me, it has not been an
enormously creative opponunity,
even less so in the movie than on the
TV series because of my limited par¬
ticipation as a performer.

Do you think that one of your more
positive motivations might be a desire not to
disappoint the fans?

I’m not sure that my feelings are
all that altruistic. I really enjoy the
feeling of being recognized. I enjoy
that affection, that warmth, which is
pan of what being an actor is all
about. I don’t think the fans would be
all that disappointed if I wasn’t on¬
board the Enterprise. I think that
they could get over it very quickly.
Don’t tell Gene Roddenberry!

If, as the Academy puts it, motion
pictures comprise both Ans and Sci¬
ences, then Lee Cole is supremely
qualified to work both ends of the
cinematic streak. Basically an anist,
with a design background in advenis-

ing and restaurant interiors, this
young woman has designed electron¬
ic schematics for a nuclear sub¬
marine, wired some onboard com¬
puters that went to the moon, and,
just prior to her involvement with
STAR TREK-THE MOTION PIC¬
TURE. spent four years at Rockwell
International, drawing presentations
and technical illustrations for the B-1
bomber, as well as contributing some
work to the Space Shuttle. “STAR
TREK,” says Cole, “for the first time
combined a lot of my interests. I had
been a primed student at one time,
and I’m on the board of directors for
a genetic research foundation, spe¬
cializing in behavioral genetics, a
brand new field. So, when we got into
designing the Enterprise’s medical
labs, I could offer all kinds of input
into futuristic technology and para¬
phernalia." She has been with the
STAR TREK project since before it
was a motion picture, working close¬
ly with anist Mike Minor. Her con¬
tributions to the look of the Enter¬
prise have been essential throughout
its many stages of metamorphosis.
“They wanted me both as an anist
and as an aerospace consultant, to
add a litde authenticity.”

Your background seems more suited
toward building a real Enterprise than a
prop one for a movie.

We decided to go all out and do
something that’s almost never done
in the industry': we would make all
the buttons and gadgets on the En¬
terprise bridge really work, so that we
wouldn’t have to have special effects
people behind the walls, doing stuff
manually. Since we were planning
the set for a TV series, we thought it
would be cheaper, in the long run, to
have all these buttons actually work.
We installed hydraulic machinery so
that when Spock w'ould press one of
the buttons on his console, these two
auxilliary consoles would actually roll
out of the wall. All the buttons actual¬
ly turned on litde gadgets that work¬
ed. Everything was electronically
wired up, and we had enough in¬
struments so that I think if they
hooked it up to some engines, they
actually would have what they need¬
ed to fly. They had pitch, roll and yaw
indicators and everything.

Did you simply continue creating in this
fashion when the senes became a feature, or
did the promotion to theatrical status pose
new problems?

We just kept right on, but we
would ask Paramount all the time,
“What is our budget?” To be creative,
you need some parameters, you have
to set yourself a problem, and then
you can figure out what solutions are
possible. But they kept saying, “Well,
whatever you need, whatever you
want, you’ve got it,” and they would
never give us a figure. (The final budg¬
et has been rumored to be in excess of
$40 million. | This made it a litde hard
for us to design things without a
budget, which usually helps you make
decisions. We just didn't know when
to cut off. And Special Effects didn’t
know when to stop wiring things. I
would design something not to be
practical but just a dummy, and Spe¬
cial Effects would get carried away
and wire it all up. Once, I went down
on the set late in the afternoon to

check something, accidentally pressed
some buttons that really worked, and
one of those hydraulic things rolled
right out and nearly smashed me.

You designed not only these consoles but
also some decorator graphics?

Yes, we had to decorate the En¬
terprise sets, but we really couldn’t
bring in a set dresser, because she
couldn’t go out and buy furniture.
Roddenberry stipulated very early in
the preproduction planning that we
couldn’t use anything already exist¬
ing. If it existed, it was automatically
out. So, our challenge was to make
every single thing that was on the set.

One thing I did love about Gene
Roddenberry is that, whatever we
would bring him, he would say,
“Well, that’s very nice but—do you
think you could push a little farther
into the future?’’ He always stretched
our imaginations a little further than
we thought they could go. If I would
design a sign for the corridor that
had a totally futuristic lettering which
had never been seen before, he’d say,
“Do you think in the future that
graphics would be so well designed
that they wouldn’t even need words,
and they would be very interplane¬
tary?” Later, I’d bring him a sign with
nothing but an arrow on it, and he’d
say, “Do you think in the future they'
will streamline that arrow even
more?” So, I’d design a new' arrow. I
did it because I enjoy it. but one of
the publishers saw it and said, “You
should do a book of just these signs
and trademarks and things.” So, Si¬
mon and Schuster will bepublishing
the “Star Trek Peel-Off Graphics
Book.”

/ assume that Roddenberry stretched
your creative muscles in other areas as well

Oh yes, I can’t begin to mention
them all. I can only say that it’s going
to be hell for any science fiction
filmmakers who follow our show,
because they're going to have to trot
out and learn things like fiber optics,
neon, edge-lit plastic, and electronics
beyond their wildest imaginings, and
animation and explosion effects that
just have never been done before.

A former “Miss India.” and a suc¬
cessful model and actress in her na¬
tive land, Persis Khambatta sought a
more international recognition by
moving to London. There, she acted
with Sidney Poitier in THE WILBY
CONSPIRACY, and with Michael
York in CONDUCT UNBECOM
ING. Now she is on the threshold of a
fame that could prove to be inter¬
planetary. having won the unique
role of Ilia (pronounced E-lie-uh). the
spiritual, sensual— and hairless— Del-
tan navigator of the starship Enter¬
prise. It is a pan for which over a
hundred other actresses were consid¬
ered. and, if Ms. Khambatta outshone
the other actresses, it might be be¬
cause, in a sense, she has desired the
role for nearly a decade. “Ten years
ago in London,” she says, “my favorite
television shows were STAR TREK
and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. It was
said, at the time, that I w'as ‘exotic.’ In
a way. it was a threat. Because exotic
women didn’t get much work, except
in James Bond films, looking beauti¬
ful. I asked my agent, ‘Look, why
can’t I work for STAR TREK. They
always use exotic women.’ He said.

‘Because it is a rerun. They have
stopped making it.’ I was a little bit
disappointed about it.

“But when I came to LA, I found
that they were doing a STAR TREK
series again, because my agent said,
‘They’ve asked to see you.’ So I
thought, ‘That’s wonderful.’ When I
went in for the interview with the
casting people, all the actresses had
beautiful wigs or hair. I decided to
walk in and wear a bald cap I bought
for a dollar, so they* would have a
rough impression of how I would
look without hair. As I walked in,
they were quiet. I told them I was a
lousy cold reader—some people are
good cold readers, but when they
come on camera, they’re not as good

— so I asked them to test me. They
did and I got the pan.

Of course, once STAR TREK became a
feature and was actually shooting, your
daily preparation was a little more compli¬
cated than just putting on a bald cap.

I wouldn’t wear a bald cap, even if
they’d say to do it, because, as an
actress, I think it looks anificial. So,
they shaved my head every day. But
even so, there was a lot of makeup on
my head in some shots, because by
lunch time, my hair w'ould be grow¬
ing out and they' couldn’t take a close-
up of me. They put three coats of
makeup on my head. It was so thick
that, after shooting, it took me forty-
five minutes to take the makeup off
my head alone. And, after having mv
head shaved for awhile, my scalp was
so soft that I staned getting pimples
like men get. So they’ sent me to a
dermatologist, who gave me a lot of
injections in my head. It was neces¬
sary’, because Deltans are supposed
to be naturally hairless, and my bald¬
ness couldn’t look like something
that had been shaved. And then, it
was the rainy season, and I couldn’t
wear a hat because of the makeup, so
I was constantly catching cold, which
ususally never happens to me.

A side from the pains you took to look the
part, how did you prepare for the role of
Ilia?

In the beginning, I didn’t know
too much about the character. I
thought they wanted a contrast to
Spock, who’s logical; my pan is very’
emotional. I really didn’t know about
Delta, the planet of origin, I didn't
know what Ilia was going to be. I
discussed her with Gene Roddenber¬
ry the first week of shooting, and he
w’rote me a four-page synopsis of the
woman and her background. I think
he did that for Spock and everyone in
the beginning of the original series.
Deltans are very’ spiritual persons.
They go beyond technology and the
material world. They’ care for people,
they’ read people’s minds: they are
much more attuned, because they
are so caring. He made it sound so
wonderful and beautiful that I was
really falling in love w’ith this person

— except for one thing I personally
did not agree with. On that planet,
sex was beyond anything. An Earth
person who made love to a Delian
w’ould become a Deltan slave because
they are sooo fantastic [laughs). I
think that’s right for me, but I didn’t
feel that sex w’as something one had
to do with everybody. That’s where I
had to do my acting.

“When I went in for the
interview with the casting
people, all the actresses
had beautiful wigs or hair.
1 decided to walk in and
wear a bald cap I bought
for a dollar.”

Persis Khambatta

Did you come up with anything you
wanted to add yourself?

I think my personality* comes out
in the film. I couldn’t make her a
super-heroic person or anything like
that, even though she was Deltan and
superior in some ways. All I thought
was that this person was human, she
felt for people more than other
people felt. It shows on the screen
that she feels for her one-time love,
played by Stephen Collins. I feel for
him. and for other people. That is
something that is real in me. and 1
wanted that to come out.

Director Wise has not only re¬
shot the space walk scene, he has also
ordered a STAR TREK trailer to be
redone, to be narrated bv Orson
Welles. It had been Paramount’s in¬
tention to get a teaser trailer for STAR
TREK-THE MOTION PICTURE
on theatre screens by late September.
In a shakeup of the Paramount publi¬
city department in early September,
the teaser trailer was scrapped and a
crash program was instituted to re¬
vamp the full length trailer then in

preparation, which was also deemed
“unsatisfactory.” Says Wise, “It was
very* pedestrian and uninteresting,
with nothing visually exciting in it so
we cut a little out, and then got
Trumbull involved with it. He’s put
in some bits and pieces of film with
miniatures, which should really help.

Even though the feature itself is
not vet in it’s final cut, composer
Jerry* Goldsmith is already working
on scenes and dramatic ideas. For
inspiration, he has visited Trumbull
and Dvkstra’s workshops to see the
miniatures, and has been viewing
what Wise describes as “fairly loose
stufF— sequences without certain key*
scenes. As fast as Goldsmith can get
the timing set, he’s putting his score
together. It’s all piecemeal. We’ll have
to do the picture maybe not even in
reels but in modules: sequences in
time as far as the dubbing is con¬
cerned.”

And so, while actors and actresses
loop their lines, while sound tech¬
nicians labor to produce innovative
effects, while composer Jerry Gold¬
smith is screening rough cut se¬
quences, while Douglas Trumbull
and his associates are adding on film
the wonders to which Leonard Ni-
mov had already reacted on a Para¬
mount sound stage, we must wait
until December 7 to find out if Wise,
Roddenberry*, and company have
safely tread a path more perilous
than any space walk: the fine line
between those who say, “ Please don’t
mess with it,” and those who sav,
"Please, do it right at last.” 0

47

[itasnfs miteir

32222 2212,
[prstewElfl TlTl
22512 4, iDsinlra.

Top: The Cygnus, a huge
derelict spacecraft
commanded by Max
Reinhardt (Maximilian
Schell), the only human
on board, and run by a
robot crew of his own
creation. Bottom: The
Palomino nestles down
onto the fore landing
dock of the Cygnus. Its
crew of four—Anthony
Perkins. Robert Forster,
Yvette Mimieux. and
Ernest Borgnine—have
come to investigate why
the ship is so near to a
powerful black hole.

13322

“Mffl2 771s

mvz n®iua”

322 2222 2 .

Above Left: The crew of
the Palomino run for their
lives from a destructive
meteor rolling down the
main corridor of the
Cygnus. Background
elements of the shot are
miniatures by Danny Lee
and Terry Saunders,
expertly combined with
the foreground actors.

Below Left: Robot driver
Vincent takes the crew
of the Palomino for a
breathtaking ride on a
Cygnus air car down one
of the huge ship's many
corridors which seem to
stretch to infinity. The
scene combines matte
painting and rear-screen
elements with live action.